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THE 



WAGES QUESTION 



A TREATISE ON 



WAGES AND THE WAGES CLASS 



BY 



FEANCIS A. WALKER, M.A., Ph.D. 

Professor of Political Economy and History, Sheffield 

Hcientific School of Yale College. 

Late Chief of the U. S. Bureau of Statistics ; Superintendent 

of the Ninth Censtis ; Author of the Statistical 

Atlas of the United States. 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

p. W. CHRISTERN 
BOSTON : CARL SCHCENHOF 

1891. 



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Copyright, 1876, by 
HENRY HOLT. 



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Ja.l8*0a 

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CONTENTS. 



PART I.— PRODUCTION AWD POPULATION. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Wages a Question in the Distribution op Wealth 3 

CHAPTER 11. 
Nominal and Real Wages 13 

CHAPTER III. 
Nominal and Real Cost of Labor 40 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Degradation op Labor 81 

CHAPTER V. 
The Law op Diminishing Returns 89 

CHAPTER VI 
Malthusianism in Wages— The Law of Population 101 

CHAPTER VII. 
Necessary Wages 109 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Wages op the Laborer are paid out of the Product 
OP HIS Industry 138 

CHAPTER IX. 

There is no Wage-fund irrespective of the Number and 
Industrial Quality op Laborers 138 



iv CONTENTS. 

PAKT II.— DISTRIBUTION. 

CHAPTER X. 

The Problem of Distribution — Competition — The Diffu- 
sion Theory— The Economical Harmonies 155 

CHAPTER XL 
The Mobility of Labor 174 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Wages Class 206 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Capitalist Class — Returns op Capital — Rent and In- 
terest 224 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Employing Class — The Entrepreneur Function — The 
Profits of Business 243 

CHAPTER XV. 
Co-operation: Getting rid of the Employing Class 262 

CHAPTER XVI 
The True Wages Question 289 

CHAPTER XVII 
What may place the Wages Class at a Disadvantage 303 

CHAPTER XVIII 

What may help the Wages Class in its Competition for 
the Product op Industry 345 

CHAPTER XIX. 

May any Advantage be acquired by the Wages Class 
through Strikes or Trades-Unions ? 385 

Concluding Remarks 409 



PART I. 



PRODUCTION AND POPULATION 



THE WAGES QUESTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

WAGES A QUESTIOlSr IN THE DISTEIBUTION OF WEALTH. 

All the questions of Political Economy may, both con- 
veniently and appropriately, be grouped under four titles, 
namely, the Production, the Distribution, the Exchange, 
and the Consumption of Wealth. All wealth has, of course, 
to be produced, in the first place ; and, moreover, it is pro- 
duced to be consumed, and for this end alone. Production 
and Consumption, therefore, are concerned with the entire 
sum of wealth. 

All wealth, however, is not exchanged' ; nor is all 

^ Not only is not, but could not be. I say this to meet the sugges- 
tion that wealth, though actually not exchanged, is yet always sub- 
ject to exchange in the sense that, if that particular form of wealth 
were to rise, or some possible substitute for it in use were to fall 
markedly in price, exchange would then take place, so that such 
wealth should still be regarded as within the domain of exchange. 
But the state of facts assumed is not real. No matter how much rice 
might advance, or other food decline in price, no human power could 
take all the crop out of India and bring back a food-substitute to the 
people, even were it Liebig's extract. The whole transportation system 
of India, reinforced by the revenues of the British Government, broke 
down under the effort, in 1873-4, to distribute to the people of certain 
districts of India an amount of rice equivalent to but a small portion 
of their usual crop. The railroads and water-courses of the United 
States could not take all the crops from the farms where they were 
raised. 



4 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

wealtli distributed. Exchange and Distribution, therefore, 
have not to deal with the entire sum of wealth. Nor is 
that part of wealth which is excluded from Exchange 
identical with that which is exchided from Distribution. 
Yast amounts of wealth are exchanged which are not 
distributed ; vast amounts are distributed which are not 
exchanged. 

The term Production of Wealth does not need, for our 
present purposes, to be defined. 

Consumption, in the economical sense, is the use of 
wealth. Tlie actual destruction of wealth thereby may be 
total or partial, rapid or slow, according to the nature of 
the material and the object to which it is directed. The 
Consumption begins when the use begins. 

" That almost all that is produced is destroyed, is true ; 
but we can not admit that it is produced for the pui-pose of 
being destroyed. It is produced for the pui-pose of being 
made use of. Its destruction is an incident to its use ; not 
only not intended, but, as far as possible, avoided."* 

Wealth is exchanged, in the meaning of the political 
economist, when the producer and tlie consumer of it are 
different persons ; and this, wliether different persons have 
united in the production of it or not. 

On tlie other hand, wealth nuist l)e distributed when dif- 
ferent persons (having separate legal interests) miite in 
production ; and this, whether the product is to be ex- 
changed or not. 

In illustration of the latter case, let us suppose that a 
dozen persons unite in a fishing venture', on equal or unequal 
shares. Upon their return the product is distributed — that 
is, divided into shares — among them. It may be that each 
of the producers will desire all the fish thus falling to his 
share for his own immediate consumption, or to be salted 
down for winter use : then none of the product M'ill be 
exchanged, though all of it has been subject to distribution. 

^ N. W. Senior, Pol, Econ., p. 54. 



DISTRIBUTION vs. EXCEANQE. 5 

Or, again, some of the fisliermen may desire to sell the 
whole, others portions only, of their fish, in order to pur- 
chase articles more adapted to their necessities : then we 
should have a product distributed wholly and exchanged 
in part. 

In illustration of the former case, let us take a small far- 
mer, in the American sense of that term,' a peasant pro- 
prietor in the phrase of Europe, cultivating his land by his 
own labor and that of his minor children, and perhaps of 
his wife as well. The product here is not distributed, 
because it is all his,'' the children and, for that matter, 
the wife, having no separate interests legally, and the 
avails of their labor going entire to the father and husband. 
The product, therefore, not being divisible into shares rep- 
resenting the claims of different producers, Distribution is 
not concerned at all with it ; yet a part of it, or the whole, 
may be exchanged. If the farm were situated in one of our 
]!*^orth-eastern States, and the product were chiefly pork, 
corn, potatoes, and garden vegetables, the greater part 
would presumably go to the support of the family, and but 
little would be exchanged for other articles. If, on the 



^ " When we speak of an American farmer, we generally mean one 
who is the absolute owner of the land and every thing on it." — T. 
Sedgwick, Pol. Ecoq., p. 54. 

^ It may be said that the father and husband is bound, both morally 
and legally, to support his wife and children out of the product ; 
and that the subsistence thus derived by them constitutes, in effect, 
their wages. To this it will be sufficient to answer, first, that the 
amount and character of that subsistence are not determined by con- 
tract between the parties, as in the case of what may properly be 
called wages, but, within the limits of the mere support of life, are 
wholly at the will and discretion of the head of the family, having no 
relation to what other persons, rendering the same character and 
amount of service, may be receiving next door ; and, second, which 
settles the question, that the head of the family is equally bound to 
supply subsistence whether the wife and children labor or not. In the 
case of children too young to labor, or of an invalid wife, the obliga- 
tion of the head of the family, in respect to subsistence, is precisely 
the same. 



6 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

other hand, it were situated in one of the Southern sea- 
board States, and the product were cotton, the whole of it, 
though not distributed, would be exchanged, being sold to 
purchase breadstulis, clothing, West-India goods, etc. 

Both the Exchange and the Distribution of Wealth may 
be, according to subject and circumstance, either simple 
and obvious, or effected through most complicated and 
roundabout processes. Thus, Exchange may take place in 
the form of direct barter between two neighbors, each 
giving some of what he has for some of what he wants ; ' 
or it may involve the seindces of railroad, steamship, and 
ocean telegraph, with the mediation of importers, jobbers, 
wholesalers, and retailers. 

In like manner. Distribution may take the form of a sim- 
ple division of a product into two or three equal shares ; or 
it may involve the partition of the annual avails of a factory 
among five hundred persons having claims upon the pro- 
duct, in shares varying from that of the nine-year-old 
" half-timer," working imder the Factory acts, to that of 
the employer or the owner of the mill. 



The distinction which I have sought here to illustrate 
between the Exchange and the Distribution of Wealth is 
not of importance in the general theory of political econ- 
omy only, but it is of immediate application to the pro- 
blem of Wages. I shall seek to show^ that the fact that 
a large portion of the wealth produced is not distributed, 
while yet it is exchanged, may have a powerful influence on 
the condition of those classes who produce distributed 
wealth. In my opinion, one can no more explain all the 
phenomena of distribution without reference to the fact 
of a vast undistributed product, than one could explain the 
movement of the Gulf Stream without reference to the 
colder waters through which and over which it flows. 

' P. 830. 



WAGES A QUESTION OF DISTRIBUTION. 7 

These brief remarks upon the scope of the four depart- 
ments of Political Economy will be sufficiently connected 
with the special topic of this work by the remark that the 
question of "Wages is a question in the Distribution of 
Wealth. 

!N^ow it is clear that in treating of the Production of 
Wealth we need to distinguish m.&a.stn2l functions / and 
this the systematic writers have done with great success, 
and we have the laws of production developed early in the 
history of economical investigation with great complete- 
ness, little being left to be added by later writers. 

But is it not equally clear that in treating of the Distri- 
bution of Wealth, we need to distinguish industrial classes, 
recognizing industrial functions only as they serve to 
characterize such classes ? This the systematic writers in 
economics have generally failed to do ; and I ventm-e to 
think there is in this the explanation of the little progress 
made towards the settlement of the important questions in 
this department of the science. 

Thus the political economist, having shown, by careful 
analysis and apt illustration, the parts taken in production 
by labor and by capital, carries the same classification for- 
ward into Distribution, and speaks of the shares of the pro- 
duct received by labor and by capital respectively. IS^ow 
it does not follow at all, as a matter of course, that because 
labor and capital perform parts which can be clearly dis- 
tinguished in production, they will receive separate shares 
in the distribution of the product. That will depend on 
whether these functions are or are not united in the same 
persons. In the distribution of wealth, shares go to per- 
sons, who may be grouped in larger or smaller classes, hav- 
ing less or more in common. So far as the function per- 
formed in production may sen^e to characterize the 
industrial class, so far the function may be recognized in 
treating the questions of Distribution, but only so far. 
Beyond this it becomes as idle to refer in distribution to 
functions performed in production as it would be to seek 



8 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

to identify the members of the body engaged in a certain 
kind of labor, and midertake to show the parts of the pro- 
duce which go severally to the hand, the eye, and the foot. 
It is true that we find men laboring, generally at reduced 
wages, who have lost one or both hands, one or both eyes, 
one or both feet ; and the economist may, by judicious in- 
quiry, satisfy himself how much these unfortunate persons 
lose in wages by their several infiruiities. But this would 
not be held to justify the extension of such an analysis or 
dissection to the vastly greater number of sound laborers, 
and the erection of a system of distribution based on the 
respective contributions of the several parts of the undivi- 
ded body to the work of production. 

Now, as matter of fact, although labor is a function in 
production which is always separable in idea from the work 
of capital, the instances where capital is furnished by one 
person and labor performed wholly by a different person 
are, if we look over the world, fewer^ by far than those in 
which capital is furnished more or less by those who per- 
form the labor, and in which labor is performed more or 
less by those who furnish the capital. In other words, it 
is not the rule, but the exception, that one or the other in- 
dustrial function shall characterize the industrial person or 
class, just as, notwithstanding all the effects of malicious 
and accidental injury, the number of those who presei-ve 
all their organs and members exceeds the number of the 
maimed, the halt, and the blind. 

Yet the great body of systematic writers in political 
economy have carried the classification which resulted 
from their analysis of the processes of production over, 
without change, into the discussion of the questions of 
distribution ; and having found labor and capital the two 
agents in production, have proceeded to speak of the remune- 
ration of labor and the remuneration of capital, as if labor 

1 Chapter XII. 



CLASSIFICATION OF LABORERS. 9 

and capital did in fact receive shares always distinct in 
the distribution of wealth. 

]N^ow it is easy to show that the term Labor, according to 
this use of it, includes the part in industry of five classes 
of persons clearly separable in economical idea, and gene- 
rally to be distinguished clearly in life, namely : 1st, the 
class who work for themselves, by themselves, either on 
their own land (the " peasant proprietor" of Europe, and 
the American " farmer") or in mechanical trades. This 
class may consume their own products entire, ^ or exchange 
them in a greater or less degree, but in either case there is 
no distribution. 2d, the tenant occupier of land, like the 
cottar of Ireland or the ryot of India, who receives the 
whole produce, subject only to the deduction of rent for 
the natural powers of the soil. 3d, the class of persons 
working for hire {e. g., domestic servants, soldiers, clergy- 
men) who are paid out of the revenue of their employers, 
and are not employed with any reference to the profits of 
production. 4:th, the class of persons working for hire, 
whether in agriculture, in trade, or in mechanical pursuits, 
who are paid out of the product of their industry, and are 
employed with reference to the profits of production. 



^ Througliout the present discussion I shall waive all question of 
the amount derived by the government from taxation. Whether 
taxes be, as Professor Senior claims (Pol. Econ., p. 182-5), " a form ot 
expenditure," and hence only cognizable in the department of Con- 
sumption, it is not needful to decide here. Suffice it to say that 
even though government were to be regarded as, in a certain sense, a 
partner in the production of wealth, and a sharer in its distribution, 
yet, inasmuch as government always enters by force and carries 
away its part, determining for itself alike how much it will take and 
to what use it will apply what it takes, political economy can know 
nothing of it. As the laws are silent amid arms, economical science 
bows before the tax-gatherer. Whether government shall take much 
or little for its own purposes out of the wealth that has been pro- 
duced is the business, not of the economist, but of the statesman. 
The methods and subjects of taxation do come within the field of politi- 
cal economy, but it is only because they affect the production of future 
wealth, its distribution, its exchange. 



10 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

5tli, the employers themselves, in so far as they personally 
conduct and control business operations, their remuneration 
being styled the " wages of supervision and management/' 

Now to the remuneration of each of these five classes the 
economists generally, as I have said, apply the term Wages, 
although only the thh-d and f om-th classes do in fact receive 
a remuneration for their services distinct from that which 
they receive for the use of their capital ; being therefore 
the only classes which receive "wages" in the ordinary 
meaning of that word ; and although, in the second place, 
classes 4 and 5 thus grouped have interests as strongly 
opposed as hiunan interests can well become. 

The explanation of such a classification would fairly 
seem to be that which has been indicated, namely, that 
economists have assumed as of coiu-se that the industrial 
functions which they distinguish in the production of 
wealth will necessarily characterize the industrial classes 
interested in the distribution of wealth. Otherwise it 
would scarcely be possible that a classification should 
be seriously proposed, for the solution of the problems of 
distribution, which groups together employer and em- 
ployed ; the peasant proprietor, the tenant occupier, and 
the hired agricultural hand ; the navvy and the railroad 
king ; the day-laborer and tlie domestic servant with a 
Stewart, an Astor, and a Rothschild. 

It is true that labor, in a certain sense of that word, is 
common to these and all other classes in production ; and 
this fact of itself ought to be enough to show that it is not 
labor which should be taken to distinguish classes in dis- 
tribution. It is not what these classes have in common, 
but those things by which they differ from each other, 
which should be made the means of characterizing them 
as claimants to the product of industry. 



It might fairly be expected that after insisting thus 
peremptorily that the question of Wages is a question in the 



mSTBIBVTION OF WEALTH. 11 

Distribution of "Wealth, and that, in distribution, not in- 
dustrial functions, but industrial classes, should be consider- 
ed, one would in a treatise on Wages at once proceed to 
state the problem of distribution, and to define the wages 
class as a party thereto. But, on the contrary, I shall be 
obliged to take up and explain with much particularity 
certain principles of Production and Population which 
can not safely be assumed for our present purposes, and 
also to deal at some length with a current theory respect- 
ing the remuneration of labor, which squarely blocks the 
way to a philosophy of Wages. 



CHAPTER II. 

NOMINAL AND REAL WAGES. 

A DISTINCTION which needs to be apprehended with great 
clearness and held strongly in the mind, throughout all 
discussion of Wages, is that between E^ominal and Real 
Wages. 

Real Wages are the remuneration of the hired laborer as 
reduced to the necessaries, comforts, or luxuries of life. 
These are what the laborer works for ; these are truly his 
wages. The money he receives under his contract with 
his employer is only a means to that end ; sometimes, as it 
proves, a most delusive means. If, as is the case with the 
great majority of his class, he spends every week or every 
month his entire earnings, he can see for himself, no 
matter how little given to reflection, that his wages are not 
his money, but what his money brings. If, again, he is 
frugal and forehanded enough to save a portion of his 
wages, and hoard it up or put it out at interest, it is still 
true, though not perhaps so evident, that this portion of 
his wages also means, in some near or distant future, " food, 
clothing, lodging, and firing" to himself or to his family. 
The habitual miser, the person who loves money for its 
own sake, is one of the most exceptional of human beings, 
the victim, doubtless, of a distinct form of disease as truly 
as the subject of alcoholism. 

But this reduction of l^ominal to Real Wages is not an 
easy matter. " No one," says Mr. Gr. R. Porter in his Pro- 
gress of the J^ation, " unless he shall have made the at- 



NOMINAL AND REAL WAGES. 13 

tempt to obtain information of this kind, can be aware 
of the difficulties opposed to his success." 

Heal may differ from Nominal Wages by reason of : 

1st. Variations in the purchase-power of money. 

2d. Yarieties in the form of payment. 

3d. Opportunities for extra earnings. 

4th. The greater or less regularity of employment. 

6th. The longer or shorter duration of the laboring 
power. 

I shall consider these causes ^ in the order in which 
they are here given. 

I. The purchase-power of money may vary by reason 
of changes in the supply of, or in the demand for, money. 
First, of changes in the supply of money. 

{a) Changes of Coinage. — If a given amount of 
gold or silver be rendered into a greater number of 
coins than formerly, it is evident that each coin will 
purchase fewer commodities, l^ow when it is stated 
that the English " pound " of to-day contains less 
than one third the standard silver it contained in 1300 
A.D. — 12 oz. of English silver coin metal being now 
rendered into QQ shillings, whereas a shilling'' is nomi- 
nally the twentieth part of a " pound " — and that the 
French livre of 1789 contained less than one sixty-sixth 
part of the silver implied in its name, the importance of 



^ To the considerations enumerated must be added, as Mr. Ward 
lias shown, still another, in the case of laborers working hy the piece. 
" When piece-work is done, you have to consider not only the price 
per piece paid, but also the conditions, as of machinery, etc. Thus the 
Hyde spinners in 1824 struck because they were getting less per piece 
than others, though all the time they were, by reason of improved 
machinery, actually earning m.ore per day." — Workmen and Wages, 
p. 23. 

2 The shilling in America suffered a still harder fate— twenty " York 
shillings" having the value of but $2.50, and 20 New-England shil- 
lings the value of SB. 88. In Pennsylvania the " dollar " was, at differ- 
ent dates, worth 4s. M. ; 5s. ; 5« M. ; 6s. ; 6s. M. ; 7s. • 7s. 6<Z.— Col- 
well's Ways and Means of Payment, p. 99. 



14 THE WA0E8 QUESTION. 

this discrimination in historical comparisons of wages be- 
comes manifest. 

Even in comparison of contemporary wages, care has often 
to be taken lest coins of the same name but of differing 
value be confounded. Tims, in the United States, the 
York shilling (eight to a dollar) and the New-England 
shilling (six to a dollar) were until recently lialjle to be 
taken for each other in calculation of prices. In the same 
way the Englisli penny differs from the pemiy in use in the 
island of Jersey, of which it takes thirteen to make a shil- 
ling. 

(b) Changes in the amount of the frecious metals in 
circulation. — The history of the production of gold and 
silver is a history of often intermitted and always highly 
spasmodic activity. Thus in the year 800 there is sup- 
posed to have been on hand gold and silver to the value, as 
expressed in American gold coin, of $1,790,000,000. 
Between that date and 1492, the date of the discovery of 
America, with its vast reserves of mined and resources of 
unmined treasure, the estimated product was $345,000,000. 
Between 1492 and 1803 the product is given as $5,820,- 
700,000 ; between 1803 and 1848, as $2,484,000,000 ; be- 
tween 1848 and 1868, as $3,571,000,000. The effect upon 
prices wrought by such wholesale changes in the volmne of 
the precious metals has long been discussed, and with 
great fulness, by economical writers, as influencing the 
wages of labor, producing a wide divergence between real 
and nominal wages in comparison of different periods ; 
but we owe to Prof. Cairnes^ the demonstration that this 
cause is also influential in creating disturbances in contem- 
porary wages, the effect upon prices being produced very 
irregularly as between countries, and as between different 
classes of commodities in the same country. 

(<?) Fluctuations in the paper suhstitiites for coin. — A 
paper currency purporting to be convertible into coin, but in 

1 Essays on the Gold Question, 1858-60, 



PURCHASE POWER OF MONEY. 15 

fact issued, in reliance on the doctrine of chances, in con- 
siderable excess of the amount of gold and silver held for 
its redemption, will undergo far more sudden and violent 
changes than would be possible with a gold and silver cur- 
rency, or a paper currency based, dollar for dollar, upon 
the precious metals. The reason is that, as the excess 
of circulation over the specie basis consists of credit, and 
not of value, it is governed, both in expansion and in con- 
traction, by the condition of credit, and not by the laws of 
Aalue, as a value currency would be. It costs twice as 
much labor to raise two thousand ounces of gold from the 
mine as to raise one thousand ounces. It costs no more to 
engrave, print, and sign a thousand two-dollar than a thou- 
sand one-dollar bills. Since, then, a paper circulation may 
be increased without labor, all such currencies have shown 
a strong tendency to increase under every speculative im- 
pulse in trade, the currency allowing prices to advance, and 
the advance of prices, in turn, quickening the speculative 
impulse, and thus creating new demands for additional cur- 
rency. When, however, prices have been carried to their 
heiglit, and the market begins to feel the effects of highly- 
stimulated foreign importations, while:f or the same reason 
the specie basis of an already dangerously inflated circula- 
tion begins to be drawn upon to pay for the goods thus 
brought in, the contraction of the currency will be even 
more sudden and extreme than was the expansion. ]^ot a 
gold dollar can be taken away unless something is given 
for it ; a bank-bill has cost nothing : it will cost nothing to 
replace it. It may therefore be destroyed without loss to 
the bank. 

But while a wide divergence between ISTominal and 
Keal Wages may be created by the alternate expan- 
sions and contractions of a currency issued on the doctrine 
of chances in excess of its specie basis, the disturbances 
hereby introduced into wages are slight compared with 
those caused by the issue of inconvertible government pa- 
per. Thus we find Washington writing, during the Kevo- 



16 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

lution, that it took a wagon-load of money to buy a wagon- 
load of provisions. The money of which he thus wrote 
was the famous " Continental currency." The deprecia- 
tion of this cm-rency had been rapid. March 1st, 1778, 
$1 in coin would purchase $1.75 in paper ; Sept. 1st, 

1778, $4; March 1st, 1779, $10; Sept. 1st, 1779, $18 ; 
March 18th, 1780, $40 ; Dec. 1st, 1780, $100 ; May 1st, 
1781, $200-500. 

The printing-press had nearly fulfilled the prediction of 
John Adams, in making " money as plenty, and of course 
as cheap, as oak-leaves." ^ Mr. Jefferson says^ that the 
paper continued to circulate in the Southern States till it 
had fallen to $1000 for $1. We are familiar with the 
prices at which the necessaries of life were purchased in 
currency thus depreciated : " Bohea tea, forty-five dollars ; 
salt — which used to be sold for a shilling a bushel — forty 
dollars a bushel, and, in some of the States, two hundred 
dollars at times ; linens, forty dollars a yard ; ironmongery 
of all sorts, one hundred and twenty for one."'* 

I have before me the public records of the second pre- 
cinct of the township of Brookfield, Massachusetts, for this 
period. On the 23d May, 1776, a " gospel minister " was 
called, the terms of settlement being as follows : " Yoted 
and granted the sum of £70 the two first years each as sa- 
lary, and the tliird year to rise to £80 per annum during his 
ministry." The succeeding votes show the effects of the 
currency inflation : Dec. Sd, 1778, " Voted and granted the 
sum of £220 to the Kev. Mr. Appleton, to be assessed on 
the polls and estates within this precinct, in addition to 
the former grant of £80 for the present year." Oct. 21sif, 

1779, " Yoted and granted the sum of £720 to the Eev. 
Mr. Appleton, in addition to his stated salary of £80." 
April Sd, 1780, " Yoted that the £220 granted Dec. 3d, 
1778, shall go for the preceding year. Yoted that the £720 
granted Oct. 21st, 1779, be so far reconsidered as that the 

1 Works, ix. 463. '' Works, ix. 249. = Works of J. Adams, vii. 199. 



PUBCHA8E-P0WEB OF MONEY. 17 

same shall be for the preceding instead of the ensuing year. 
Then voted and granted the sum of £2420 in addition to 
his stated salary, to be assessed on the polls and estates 
within this precinct, for the support of the Kev. Mr. Ap- 
pleton from October, 1779, to October, 1T80." 

Second. The purchase-power of money may vary by 
reason of changes in the demand for money. The sup- 
ply of money is the amount which is offered for all other 
commodities ; the demand for money is the amount of all 
other commodities offered for it. Eggs in the Highlands 
were cheap in Dr. Johnson's day, " not because eggs were 
j)lenty, but because pence were few." Wliether it be the 
plentif ulness c f eggs or the fewness of pence which deter- 
mines the price, the historian of wages is bound to ascer- 
tain. 

It is manifest that the annual production of commodities 
will increase with the efficiency of labor and capital, and 
that this increase is from age to age very great ; also, that 
the longer this annual production is sustained the greater 
will be the accumidation of commodities, the results of 
past production. 



Two practical remarks remain to be made, in the nature 
of warning, to those who undertake the difficult task of 
instituting such comparisons of wages as are referred to 
above. 

The first relates to the effect of local prices. The com- 
modities into which the laborer desires to render his money 
wages, bear prices differing greatly in localities not far re- 
moved from each other. The mere passage from city to coun 
try often produces a marked distinction in the prices of the 
first necessaries of life ; while, where more considerable 
distances intervene, the differences in local prices are often 
sufficient to effect a substantial equality between nominal 
wages widely divergent, or to greatly exaggerate apparent 
differences, Thus ?^ mechanic living in some portions of 



IS TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

Yermont, away from a railroad, can buy food for his fam- 
ily at prices wliicli would sound like a dream to a town 
mechanic. Indeed some of the most expensive luxuries of 
the city, to which professional men scarce aspire, sweet 
cream, fresh fruits, and new-laid eggs, are within easy 
reach of his means. The more substantial articles of diet, 
meats, grains, and vegetables, cost one half, or one third 
perhaps, what they do in a city market. Would he build 
a house ? The main material costs little ; the land less. 
Does he lease a cottage ? His rent is not one fourth what 
his city cousin pays for perhaps squalid and unwholesome 
quarters. 

But, it may be asked, is not the country mechanic at a 
disadvantage in respect to all the commodities, whether 
manufactured articles or the products of agriculture, which 
are brought from abroad ; and does not this disadvantage 
go far to counterbalance the advantages enumerated ? It 
can not be questioned that a loss is suffered on this ac- 
count ; but it is much less than the gain by reason of two 
causes : first, the greater share of his expenditures are for 
articles produced near by ; second, those which are brought 
from abroad are, almost without exception, markedly in- 
ferior in bulk to those which are supplied l)y the domestic 
market, and hence their price is less enhanced 1 >y transporta- 
tion. He saves upon his meats and grains and vegetables, 
liis fuel, and the timber for his house, the freight of those 
articles to a market ; he pays the freight from market upon 
groceries and spices ; upon clothes and shoes ; upon nails 
and putty and glass. 

My second warning relates to the liability of error in 
comparison of wages due to the great diversity which ex- 
ists in the articles consumed by the wages class in dif- 
ferent places and at different times. Even in the lowest 
condition of life the laborer's expenditure is upon several 
articles which are necessary to his subsistence, while in 
coimtries where nature is more lil)eral or art has greatly 
diversified human industry, the laborer indulges in a con 



PURCRASE-POWEB OF MONEY. 19 

siderable variety of expenditures, ISTow, not only is it 
true that some of these articles may rise in price while 
others remain stationary, or even decline — or if all rise, yet 
each rises in a degree peculiar to itself, and so an average 
becomes difficult to reach, particularly in the absence of 
ample and authentic statistics of retail trade, scarcely any- 
where attainable — but those articles which make up the sub- 
sistence of workingmen are consumed by them in very vari- 
ous proportions, rendering it necessary, in estimating the 
comparative wages of two periods, to have regard not only to 
the advance or decline in price of each such article, but also 
to the amount thereof entering into consumption, inasmuch 
as a large advance upon some commodity which the la- 
borer uses but rarely and in very limited amounts may 
affect his well-being far less than a moderate rise in 
another commodity of prime necessity. 

This it is which malies it so difficult to compare wages at 
different periods in the United States. The habits of the 
people vary and have varied so greatly in respect to dress 
and diet, not to speak of other things, as to make it almost 
impossible to secure a statement which will be accepted by 
all candid parties to a controversy as to the quantities 
of each principal article of consumption, which shall 
represent the expenditure of the average workman's fam- 
ily ; and unless a statement of quantities can be accepted 
•as approximately correct, it can afford only a vague idea 
to secure even a precise statement of the prices of the sev- 
eral articles. 

II. ITominal and Real Wages may differ, secondly, by 
reason of varieties in the form of payment. 

Wages are, to a very large extent, though reckoned in 
money, not paid in money.^ In agriculture, the world 

* Even when wages are paid in money, there are two methods by 
which their real value to the laborer may be reduced in addition to all 
the causes mentioned under the preceding head. These are, first, the 
practice of " long-pays," by which the workman is held a long time 
out of his Tvages, and obliged to purchase goods meanwhile on credit, 



20 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

over, full payment in money is highly exceptional \rhero 
it is not -vrholly unknown. In England the money wages 
in general far exceed the estimated value of all the other 
forms of pavment, and rarely constitute less than one half 
the nominal wages. In Scotland, except m the neighbor- 
hood of large towns, pavment in kind is very general, 
while " in some parts of the highlands little money passes 
at all between employer and employed.' '^ In Germany' 
the report of the recent commission of the Agricultural 
Congress proves the custom of payments in kind to prevail 
in every province from East Prussia to Alsace. In France' 
this custom prevails to a greater or less extent in nearly all 
departments. In the United States board to the immar- 
ried laborer is perhaps the rule ; while in the South, at 
least, the pavment in kind generally includes the subsist- 
ence of the laborer and his family, and, to a considerable 
extent, other necessaries of life. 

on minoas terms. This is sometimes necessary in new countries ; but 
in old countries it is often resorted to needlessly, and forms one of the 
standing grievances of the laboring class. The second is the practice 
of " truck," by which the workman, though perhaps for form's sake 
paid in money, is compelled, under fear of discharge, to purchase 
goods at the employer's store. The effects of the latter practice on the 
welfare of the laboring classes will be discussed fully at a later stage 
(pp. 3-^4-12). 

^ Fourth Report, Commission on the Employment of Womea and 
Children in Agriculture, p. 110. " Part payment in food still prevails 
extensively in Wales." — Frederick Purdy, Statistical Journal, xxiv. 
329. 

^ Die Lage der landlichen Arbeiter. 

" The married farm-servants," says Mr. Petre in his Report of 1870 
on the Condition of the Indu-^trial Classes of Prussia (p. .50), " are called 
' Deputaten,' or persons receiving an allowance in kind, to distinguish 
them from other farm-servants who all take their meals together at 
the farm. The ' Deputaten ' receive in addition to their wages a cer- 
tain allowance of com, potatoes, etc. Tfiis primitive practice is, Jiowetier, 
graduaUy giving ii-ny to tite syfftem of paying fuU wagers in mon^yP 

"* In the departments Bouches du Rhone, Gard, and Gironde it is 
not customary to pay in kind. In some, this description of payment 
does not amount to more than 10 francs (a year). //*, mrnf, it unr- 
poji^eti in vahM thi amo^int of mou^y paym^ent." — Lord BraVjazon's Report 
oa the Condition of the Industrial Classes of France, 1872, p, 42. 



PAYMENT OF VTAGES IX KIXD. 21 

In the varioTis branches of meclianical labor money pay- 
ment is more nsnal, tliougb ^Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, in 
his visits to the United States prior to 1S50, found the 
practice of paying wages partly in commodities quite gen- 
eral ;^ and in England money payments hare only been 
secured by yigorous legislation and great vigilance in ad- 
ministi-ation. Mr. Hemes reports' that in the sulphur- 
mining districts of Italy "* stores exist, under the direction 
of the administi-ation, where the persons employed are pro- 
vided with oil. wine, and bread, and other necessaries, under 
the ' tally ' or • truck " system."' 

Payment of the wages of mechanical labor otherwise than 
in the coin of the realm is forbidden in Germany by the In- 
dustrial Code of 1S69. In France the artisan classes have 
always resented payment in commodities with a peculiar 
jealousy. 
■• The multitudinous forms of payment other than in 
money may be mdely grouped for our present some- 
what casual pm-pose as (1) rent, where cottages or tene- 
ments are provided for the laborer and his family by the 
employer, whether in agricultiu-al or in mechanical indus- 
try ; (2) board, mainly confined to unmarried laborers ; 
(3) allowances, such as deiinite quantities of various Mnds 
of food, diink, or fuel ; (4) what we may call, in distinction 
fi-om Xo. 5, perquisites, such as the hauling of the labor- 
ers coal or peat by the employer s teams, the keep of a 
cow, the opportunity to take flour at miller s prices f 

^ Report on the Payment of TVages Bill (1854), pp. 103-5. 

' Report on tlie Condition of the Industrial Glasses of Italy, 1871, p. 
231. 

' In Devonshire and elsewhere a " grist-com" perquisite is recog- 
nized, by which the laborer is allowed to have grain at a fixed price 
per bushel, whatever the Tuarket rate. The amount so allowed to be 
taken ranges from two or three pecks to a bushel every fortnight. — 
Heath's English Peasantry, pp. 95, 96, 140. 141. 

" In some counties, as Dorset, the farmer pays part of his men's 
wages in com at 1 shilling per bushel below the market price."— 
Mr Purdy, Stat. Journal, ssiv. 3"39. 



22 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

(5) privileges, like the gleaning of fields or the keeping a 

pig- 
Thus Mr. T. Scott, of Roxbnrglisliire, allows his work- 
men a free house and garden ; food (say 4 weeks) in har- 
vest ; carriage of coal ; permission to keep a pig, and the 
keep of a cow ; 100 stones of oatmeal, 21 bushels of bar- 
ley, 6 bushels of peas, 1600 yards of potatoes', 6 tons of 
coal at pit prices, £5 in money, in addition to extra earn- 
ings at han-est.i Another farmer gives his two plough- 
men £27 and £26 severally per annum, free cottages 
and gardens, 6^ bolls of meal, 3 bolls of potatoes, and 
" drives" their coal. Another in the higliland part of 
Lanarkshire gives £18 annually, the keep of a cow, liberty 
to keep a pig, 65 stones of oatmeal, and 16 cwi. of pota- 
toes. He jplaces the total value of money wages, allowances, 
etc., at from £35 to £40.'' From the above it will readily 
be seen how difficult and how nearly impossible it is to re- 
duce such various conditions to the unifonn expression 
necessary for comparison. The " board " furnished may 
vary from the generous living characteristic of Cumber- 
land and Westmoreland^ in England, and of the United 
States generally, to the barest and coarsest subsistence 
allowed in less favored regions. The cottages thus given 
rent free may be " model cottages" or they may be of the 
character* described in so many English official reports, 
early and recent, with reference to which the Earl of 
Shaftesbury said, " Dirt and disrepair such as ordinary 



^ Fourtli Report (1870) Commission on the Employment of Women 
and Children in Agriculture, p. 58. 

"" Ibid., p. 110. ^ See Mr. Tremenheere's Report for 1869. 

* The Hon. Edward Stanhope, Assistant Commissioner, says of the 
cottages in Shropshire : " The point especially deserving of attention in 
this county is the infamous cJiararter of the cottages. In the majority 
of the parishes I visited they may be described as tumble-down and 
ruinous, not water-tight, very deficient in bedroom accommodations and 
in decent sanitary arrangements." — Report on the Employment of 
Women and Children in Agriculture, 1868-9, p. xsxiv. 



PERQUISITES AND ALLOWANCES 23 

folks can form no notion of, darkness that may be felt, 
odors that may be handled, faintness that can hardly be 
resisted, hold despotic rule in these dens of despair." i In 
respect to the other allowances, perquisites, and privileges, 
as we have classed them, which go so largely to make up 
the wages of the laborer in agriculture in all countries, 
there is perhaps not quite so great range as in the board or 
cottage rent furnished ; yet differences in the quality of 
the articles allowed, or in their adaptation to the wants of 
the laborer, or in the generosity with which traditional or 
stipulated privileges are interpreted, may still go far to 
contract or expand the apparent wages. Thus Mr. Heath 
in his work, " The English Peasantry," charges that the 
haulins: of turf for the laborer's fuel is often a delusion 
and a snare, the turf when cut and piled up on the moors fre- 
quently being spoiled by the rain before the farmer finds 
it convenient to lend the horse and cart f also that the 
oft-cite& " grist-corn" perquisite is of little or of no value 
to the laborer, the corn for this purpose being frequently 
taken from the " rakings" of the field.' It is upon the 
cider allowance, however, that Mr. Heath expends the main 
force of his indignation, and he quotes with effect the tes- 
timony of Mr, Austin, one of the Assistant Poor-Law Com- 
missioners of 1813, as to the very inferior quality of the 
article supplied by the farmers of the western counties 
" under the ironical name of cider."* * 

The " cow" and the " pig" as elements of wages de- 
serve a brief mention. It will be noted that we have 
placed them under different heads in our classification. 
The entire " keep" of the cow is furnished by the employ-- 
er over whose land she grazes ; the food of the pig, on the 
other hand, is supposed to be furnished by the laborer him- 
self, though a natural doubt on that point leads many em- 

^ Address as President Br. Soc. Sc. Association, 1866. Transac 
tions, p. 9. 
? P. 94. ? P. 95, cf. 140, 141, ■• Pp. 55, 56, 86, 87. 



24 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ployers to refuse this highly valued privilege.' " For. 
merly," said Mr. Inglis, writing of the peasants' rent in Ire- 
land in 1834, " the pig was sufficient for this ; but the market 
has so fallen that something is wanted besides the pig to 
make up the rent.'" In England Mr. Heath assigns the 
pig a somewhat different function. It is at once " to the 
farm laborer a kind of savings-bank, in which he puts the 
few scraps he can save out of his scanty fare,'" and also " a 
kind of surety with the petty village tradesman. Poor 
Hodge could get no credit if he had not some such secu- 
rity as a pig aifords."* 

The keep of a cow is of course a much larger concession 
from the employer, and is proportionally rare. Sir Bald- 
wyn Leighton declares it to be not less than " the solution 
of the whole question of the agricultural laborer."^ The 
net weekly profit Sir Baldwyn estimates at 5 or 6 shil- 
lings, the entire labor being performed by the wife and 
younger children. It will, of course, be urged that such a 
concession would amount simply to a proportionate reduc- 
tion of money wages. This is a question which we shall 
perhaps be in a better position to discuss hereafter. The 
concession of " cow-land " is only mentioned here as one 
of the many ways in which, even in wealthy communities, 
laborers in agriculture are still paid, rendering it a work of 
extreme difficulty to reduce the wages prevailing in differ- 
ent sections to any thing like equal terms. 

III. Nominal and Real "Wages may further differ by 
reason of opportunities for extra earnings in some occupa- 
tions and in some localities. 

It has been said that the true measure of wages is to be 



' " In Dumfriesshire even the keeping of a pig is often prohibited 
on the ground that it affords inducements to little acts of peculation." 
Fourth Report (1870) on the Employment of Women and Children in 
Agriculture, p. 85. 

^ A Journey throughout Ireland (4th ed.), p. 371. 

^English Peasantry, p. 113. "Ibid., p. 11^ 

" See. So. Transactions, 1873, pp. 395-8. 



THE FAMILY THE UNIT OF INCOME. 25 

found not in the money received, but in tlie amount of the 
necessaries, comforts, and hixuries of life which that money 
will purchase. But it often happens that the amount of 
money receivea oy the laborer as wages does not express 
the sum of his own earnings, while, again, the resources of 
the family — ^which, rather than the individual, ought to be 
the unit of income as it is of expenditure — may be, in many 
cases, largely augmented by the earnings of other members. 
Such opportunities vary greatly as among localities and as 
among occupations, and hence we may find a substantial 
equality of family income where a great difference in 
wages apparently exists ; or, in other cases, the apparent 
difference may be much enhanced through the operation of 
the same cause. 

An example of the first means of adding to real wages 
is found in the Allotment system, which already prevails to 
a considerable extent in England and has been highly ap- 
proved by economists of reputation ; ^ though there are not 
wanting those who argue that this is merely another means 
of reducing money wages. By the Allotment system the 
laborer is enabled to rent a piece of ground large enough 
to employ him for but a portion of his time, with a view 
to its being carefully worked by spade culture as a garden. 

An example of the second means of adding to real wages 
is given by Prof. Senior when he says, " The earnings of 
the wife and children^ of many a Manchester weaver or 

1 H. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., pp. 254,255. W. T. Thornton on Over 
Population, chap. viii. 

The Commissioners of 1843 reported strongly in favor of the Allot- 
ment system ; they declared that it did not tend to reduce wages, but 
that all the proceeds of the land thus cultivated constituted " a clear 
addition to wages." 

On the other side, Mr. Mill, in his Principles of Pol. Econ. , wrote, 
" The scheme, as it seems to me, must be either nugatory or mis- 
chievous." — I. 441,442. 

^ The industrial disadvantages of the employment of married wo- 
men in factories will be spoken of hereafter. To their full extent, 
whatever that may be, the superiority claimed by Prof. Senior for the 



26 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

spinner exceed or equal those of himself. Those of the 
wife and children of an agricultural laborer, or of a carpen- 
ter or a coal-heaver, are generally unimportant — while the 
husband in each case receives 15 shillhigs a week, the 
weekly income of the one family may be 30 shillings, and 
that of the other only lY or 18 shillings.'" The income 
of the family, it is evident, therefore, should be taken as 
the unit in estimating wages. 

ly. 1^0 consideration is more needful to be observed 
in the reduction of Nominal to Eeal Wages than that of 
the greater or less regularity of employment ; yet none is 
more neglected, not only in comparison of the remunera- 
tion of labor in different occupations and localities, but 
also in a still more important use of the statistics of 
wages, namely, the comparison of different periods to 
ascertain whether strikes and trades miions have been 
really successful in advancing the condition of the working 
classes. It is not unusual to see the fact of an in- 
crease of wages in certain occupations following a threat- 
ened or accomplished strike, put forward as proof positive 
of the efficiency of this instrumentality, without the ques- 
tion being raised whether the certainty and continuity of 
work may not have been affected injuriously in conse- 
quence. Yet it is clear that a nominal increase of wages 
may be offset by irregularity of employment so as not only 

spinner or weaver must be discounted. Again, so far as the employ- 
ment of tlie female liead of the family in outside labor, or of very 
young children in any sort of labor, tends to reduce health and 
strength or to shorten life, this must be set off against the advantage 
of increased present earnings, in accordance veith the principles to be 
noted in the paragraphs which immediately follow. 

' Lectures on Wages, pp. 8-9. 

It is not only true that the opportunities for extra earnings vary 
greatly as between different occupations, as shown by Prof. Senior's 
illustration, but such opportunities vary greatly within the same occu- 
pation in different localities. Thus Mr. Purdy's tables of Irish 
agricultural wages show that the " harvest wages" for men range 
from 2 shillings Qd. a week above ordinary wages, all the way up to 
11 shillings. — Statistical Journal, xxv. 448-50. 



BEGULARITT OF EMPLOYMENT. 27 

to render the advance nugatory, but, through, the influence 
on the laborer's habits of industry, temperance, and frugal- 
ity, to make the change highly pernicious. The neglect to 
make account of the regularity of employment is probably 
due not to want of candor in argument, but to the lack of 
a popular recognition of the vital importance of this con- 
sideration. Yet it ought to be evident to the earliest 
writer on comparative wages that the true time-unit is not 
less than the entire year. The hourly, daily, or weekly 
rate of payment is but one factor of wages ; the number 
of hours, daj^s, and weeks throughout the year for which 
that rate of wages can be obtained is the other. 

Yarying regularity of employment is due to (1) the na- 
ture of the individual occupation, (2) the force of the sea- 
sons, (3) social causes, (4) industrial causes of a general 
character. 

In agriculture, for example, we find the first two causes 
operating to produce great variations in the monthly rate 
of wages. It is not alone the difference of seasons which 
makes agricultural wages so irregular;' it is in part the 

^TMs irregularity may be greater or less according to climate 
or tlie character of the crops. Some crops require far more days of 
labor in the year than others. Some countries are locked in frost half 
the year ; in others the ground opens early and freezes late. " In the 
countries on the Danube, these operations are spread over seven 
months ; in the countries on the north of the Volga they must be con- 
cluded in four months." — Hearn's Plutology, pp. 74, 75. An English 
farmer is ploughing while a New-England farmer is hauling wood on 
the ice and snow. Mr. Purdy's valuable tables (Statistical Jour- 
nal, xxiv. 352, 353) show that February is the worst month for employ- 
ment in agriculture in England ; August, the best. 

Mr. Purdy gives a table which he deems fairly representative, ex- 
hibiting the divisions of agricultural wages between the seasons as 

follows : 

Paid for Labor : 

First quarter 18.9 

Second " 22.1 

Third " 38.6 

Fourth " ...... 20.4 

100.0 



28 



THE WAGE8 QUESTION. 



nature of tlie operations involved. After tlie seed has 
been planted, time mnst be given it to grow, and this 
wonld be so even if there were no winter. So in the fish- 
eries it is not stress of weather alone which obliges the 
laborer to lie idle portions of the year, bnt in part the re- 
productive necessities of the fish. In other instances it is 
the force of the seasons alone which makes employment 
iiTegular, as for example in the brickmaking,' (piarrjing, 
cai-pentering, house-painting, and sundry other out-door 
trades. 

The loss of time from sickness, as shown by the statis- 
tics of friendly societies and by other evidence, varies 
greatly in different localities and occujjations : an element 
that can not properly be excluded from the discussion of 
comparative wages, as such sickness involves not only 
loss of labor, but also, generally, a positive expense for at- 
tendance and medicine. 

The following table from Mr. Alex. Glen Finlaison's re- 
port (1853) on sickness and mortality in friendly societies, 
shows the experience of certain large groups of occupa- 
tions in this respect : 





Light Labor. 


Heavy Labor. 


Age. 


Without ex- 


With expo- 


Without ex- 


With expo- 




posure to the 


sure to the 


posure to the 


sure to the 




weather. 


weather. 


weather. 


weather. 




Days lost. 


Days lost. 


Days lost. 


Days lost. 


20 


6.48 


6.00 


6.71 


7.16 


25 


6.00 


5.78 


6 82 


7.45 


30 


6.01 


5.85 


7.06 


7.69 


35 


6.20 


5.84 


7.45 


8.04 


40 


7.13 


7.29 


8.03 


9.40 


45 


8.03 


7.4S 


9.87 


10.78 


50 


10.48 


10.02 


12.15 


12.58 


55 


13.65 


10.66 


16.08 


14.33 


60 


17.18 


11.23 


20.36 


21.78 


65 


26.22 


18.15 


26.99 


31.55 



* In brickmaking, in England, it is estimated that men can be em- 
ployed but 45 weeks in the year, in consequence of rain and frost. In 
tlie Northern States of America the failure of employment is for a 
much longer period. 



LOSS OF TIME BY HOLIDAYS 29 

"WTiat we call social causes in restriction of employ^ 
ment include the habits of a community respecting festiv- 
ities and religious observances.' Yauban estimated the 
loss of labor in France from fete days and Sundays at 90 
days in the year. In some Catholic countries the holidays 
more or less scrupulously observed exceed, including Sun- 
day, one hundred. Among the Hindoos they are said to 
consume nearly half the year. It is doubtless true that 
poverty sometimes joins with superstition' in imposing 
excessive fasts, and the want of work may account for 
the readiness with which a population surrenders itself 
to celebrating the virtues of a saint ; yet there can be 
no doubt that a force not industrial operates in some 
countries in reduction of the number of days of labor, 
A very common multiplier taken in England and the 
United States in reckoning annual earnings is 300 ; yet 
there can be little doubt that this is an exaggeration. 

But there are also industrial causes of a general nature 



^ Mr. Lecky remarks of holidays in Catholic countries : " The num- 
ber that are compulsory has been grossly exaggerated." — History of 
Rationalism, ii. 323. 

Diplomatic and consular reports to the British Government give 
perhaps the most recent and exact information on the subject of holi- 
days in the Greek Church. 

Consul Calvert reports from Montastir that, reckoning Sundays, 
there are more than one hundred days in the year when the Christians 
voluntarily cease work (1870, p. 244). Consul Stuart states the number 
of days besides Sundays which the Eastern Church attempts to with- 
draw from labor at 48. Formerly, he says, the number was greater ; 
but the opposition of the working classes to the loss of so much time 
has caused a reduction in this respect, which will doubtless proceed 
further (1871, p. 780). Mr. Gould gives the number of working days 
in Greece as 265 (1870, p. 500). Consul Sandwith gives the number of 
fete days in Crete as 80 (1872, p. 382). Consul Egerton states that in 
Russia " besides Sundays there are about 24 holidays in the year, 
when no work is allowed. Some are saints' days ; others, state holi- 
days" (1873, p. 111). 

^ Gibbon, chap, xlvii. , of the Jacobites, whose five annual Lenta 
the historian is disposed to regard as an instance of " making a virtue 
of necessity." 



30 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

whicli of late years are operating more and more to inter- 
rupt the continuity of production and render employment 
precarious. These causes, though general in their origin, 
do yet affect localities and occupations very diversely, in- 
troduciug thus a new element of great difficulty into the 
problem of wages. Thus there is no reason from the nature 
of the operations involved, why cotton-spinning should not 
proceed equably through all the months of the year, but in 
fact the demands of modern trade require that periods of 
heavy production shall alternate with periods of dulness 
and depression.' In the same way the aggregation of vast 
numbers of workmen into factories for the manufacture of 
boots and shoes has introduced an irregularity into that 
branch of manufacture which did not exist when it was 
confined to the small shop where the master worked with an 
apprentice and perhaps a journeyman, and made goods for 
a well-defined and permanent body of customers. 

Among the industrial causes which introduce this dis- 
turbance into the employment of labor must of course be 
included strikes and lock-outs. Dr. John Watts has fur- 
nished some very instiiietive computations as to the first 
cost of strikes. Thus, assuming five per cent addition to 
existing wages to be the matter in dispute between the 
employer and the laborer, he shows that if the strike 
succeeds its results wull be, roughly speaking, as follows :" 

* Mr. Dudley Baxter, speaking of the operatives in this branch of 
industry, wrote : " We all know their periodical distresses. It may be 
said that these were accidents. They are not mere accidents, but inci- 
dents — natural incidents of our manufacturing economy. They are 
sure to recur under ditferent forms, either from gluts, or strikes, or war, 
and they must be allowed for in computations of earnings. " — National 
Income, p. 45. 

" lu 1839 tlie weavers of Lancashire and Cheshire were earning, 
at best, from 4«. 4^^. to 6.s\ per week when at work. The most 
favored had to wait a week or two between one piece of work and the 
next ; and about a fourth of the whole number were out of employ 
altogether." — Martineau, History of England, iii. 167. 

■^ Statistical Journal, xxiv. 501. I have sought to show elsewhere 
(p. 391, n.) that all the time occupied by a strike is not necessarily lost. 



LOSS OF TIME BY STBIKBS. 81 

Years of work at 

the extra rate. 

The loss of 1 lunar month's wages will require to make it up, If 

" 3 " " " " " 3i 

" 6 " " " " « 9f 

" 12i " « " " " 20 

" The strike of the London builders in 1859 was for 10 
per cent of time or its equivalent, 10 j)er cent of wages ; 
and as it lasted 26 weeks, would, if successful, have re- 
quired lOf years of continuous work at the extra rate to 
make up the loss of wages sacrificed. The amount in dis- 
pute between the weavers of Colne and their employers 
did not average more than 3i- per cent, and had the strike 
been successful, would have required more than 28 years 
continuous employment at the advance to make up the 
amount of wages lost, by which time the lost wages would, 
at 5 per cent (interest), have quadrupled." This Colne 
strike lasted 50 weeks ; the great Preston strike, 38 weeks ; 
the Padiham strike, 29 weeks. 

Computations like these do not of themselves show that 
strikes can not advantage the working classes, but they do 
show the necessity of taking such elements into account in 
reducing nominal to real wages. 

The joint effect of all the causes enumerated as affect- 
ing the regularity of employment is very considerable. 
Prof. Leone Le^a, in his treatise on Wages,' estimates the 
lost time of all the persons returned as pursuing gainful 
occupations in England to be 4 weeks in the year, and 
deems this loss covered by the exclusion of all persons 
over 60 years of age, leaving those below employed full 
time. To this Mr, Dudley Baxter, in his admirable 
work on " National Income,'" rejoins that if this were 
so, there would be no able-bodied paupers in England. 
Mr, Baxter goes forward to show the inadequacy of 
Prof. Levi's estimate in terms which I shall do well to 
quote : 

" I will take a good average instance (and a very large 

' P. 5. "" Pp. 41, 43. 



32 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

one) of the way in which wages are earned in the building 
trades. ThtS3 trades form a whole, and include carpen- 
ters, bricklayers, masons, plasterers, painters, and plumbers, 
and number in England and Wales about 387,000 men 
above twenty years of age. It is only the best men, work- 
ing with the best masters, that are always sure of full time. 
These trades work on the hour system, introduced at the 
instance of the men themselves, but a system of great 
precariousness of employment. The large masters give 
regular wages to their good workmen, but the smaller mas- 
ters, especially at the east end of London, engage a large 
proportion of their hands only for the job, and then at 
once pay them off. All masters when work grows slack 
immediately discharge the inferior hands and the unsteady 
men — of whom there are but too many among clever work- 
men — and do not take them on again until work revives. 
In bad times there are always a large number out of em- 
ployment. In prosperity much time is lost by keeping 
Saint Monday and by occasional strikes. Let us turn to 
another great branch of industry, the agricultural labor- 
ers, whose numbers are : men, 650,000 ; boys, 190,000 ; wo- 
men, 126,000 ; and girls, 36,000. Continuous employment 
has largely increased since the new Poor Law of 1834, and 
good farmers now employ their men regularly. But in 
many places such is not the custom. Near Broadstairs, in 
Kent, I was told that, on an average, laborers were only 
emploj^ed 40 weeks in the year. Mr. Purdy's figures of 
the influence of the seasons on agricultural employment 
show that the wages paid in the second quarter of the year, 
on a large estate in Notts, were 20 per cent more than in 
the first quarter. In the harvest quai'ter they were more 
than double. He also mentions the significant fact that 
the pauperism of the five most agrarian divisions of Eng- 
land is greater in February than in August by 425,000 
against 370,000, or 55,000 persons. These 55,000 repre- 
sent a great prevalence of the custom of turning off labor- 
ers at the slack season. So that even so far as the men 



DURATION OF LABORING POWER. 33 

are concerned, there must evidently be a large deduction 
for time out of work. But when we come to boys and wo- 
men, the case is still stronger. I found in Kent and other 
places that boys' and women's employment is very irregu- 
lar, and that they are not at work more than half their 
time ; in fact, they are only employed as supernumeraries to 
the men, and only taken on at busy times." 

Y. Still further, jSTominal and Eeal Wages may be made 
to differ through the longer or shorter duration of the 
power to labor. 

We have seen that it is not what the laborer obtains for 
a single day of the week or a single month of the year 
which fixes liis real remuneration, but that regularity of 
employment from month to month and quarter to quarter 
is a most important element in the wages problem. But 
neither is it what the workman receives in a single year or 
in a term of years which alone can determine the question 
of high or low wages. We need, besides, to know the to- 
tal duration of his laboring power, that we may be able to 
compare the term of his productive with that of his unpro- 
ductive life. 

It is evident, supposing two persons begin to labor 
productively at fifteen years of age, and continue actively 
at work, with the same rate of nominal wages, until death, 
that the one receives a higher real remuneration who lives 
the longer, since the cost of his maintenance during the 
first 15 years of helpless life must, in any philosophical 
view of the subject, be charged upon his wages' during 

* The cost, at contract prices, of raising an orphan child to the age 
of 11, is computed by Mr. Chadwick (Statistical Journal, xxv. 505) at 
£130, or the value of a team of four first-class farm-horses. 

The same eminent authority estimates the average loss of vs^orking 
ability, by premature deatlis from preventible causes, to be at least 10 
years (Stat. Journal, xxviii. 26). 

" In the production of dead machinery," says Dr. Edward Jarvis, " the 
cost of all that are broken in the making is charged to the cost of all 

which are completed So, in estimating the cost of raising 

children to manhood, it is necessary to include the number of years 



34 



THE WAGES QUESTION. 



his period of labor. It is true that the expense was, in 
fact, borne by his parents, while he will himself bear the 
cost of the maintenance, in childhood, of his own offspring ; 
but no one will, I believe, question that, in the economical 
sense, the support of each generation of laborers should be 
charged against its own wages,* just as truly as that a far- 
mer, in solving the question whether a cow dying at a 
certain age had paid for herself, would set against the pro- 
ceeds of the sales of her milk or butter the expense of 
rearing her. 

If this principle of estimating the wages of a lifetime 
be accepted as just, its great practical importance will not 
be denied. 

And fii'st in comparison of nations. 

In a paper on the Political Economy of Health, Dr. 
Edward Jarvis has given some most instructive tables 
which can not be better introduced than in the language 
of the British Poor-Law Commissioners of 1842 '^ " The 
strength of a people does not depend on the absolute num- 
ber of its population, but on the relative number of those 
who are of the age and strength to labor." 

The following table^ shows the number of years spent 
under 20 for every 100 persons attaining that age : 



Country. 


Years spent under 20. 


Per cent of loss. 


Norway 


2142 
2182 
2192 
2251 
2327 
2514 


7.1 


Sweden 


9.1 


England 


9.6 


United States 


12.55 


France 


16.35 


Ireland 


25.70 







that have been lived by those that fell by the way with the years 
of those that pass successfully through the period of development." — 
Eeport Massachusetts Board of Health, 1874, p. 340. 

* " Le salaire d'un ouvrier doit comprendre .... I'amortisse- 
ment du capital employe par ses parents, avec lequel il pent alimenter 
eon enfant qui le remplacera un jour dans la societe." — Jos. Gamier, 
Traite d'Economie Politique, p. 462. 

^ P. 184. = Report Mass. State Board of Health, 1874, pp. 341, 342 



DTTBATION OF LABORING POWER. 



35 



Again, the Life Tables of the several States show the 
average number of years lived after the age of 20 to be as 
follows : 



COUNTET. 


Years. 


COUNTBT. 


Yeabs. 


Norway 


39.61 
38.10 
37.46 
35.81 


Eno-land 


35.55 


Sweden 


France 


33.84 


United States (Males) 
Hanover . . 


Ireland 


28.88 







" Thus tlie productive efficiency fell short of its fulness^ 
20. Y8 per cent in ISTorway ; 23. Y per cent in Sweden ; 
25.08 per cent in the United States ; 28.38 per cent in 
Germany ; 28.9 per cent in England ; 34.3 per cent in 
France, and 42.24 per cent in Ireland." 

Again Dr. Jarns says, " Having the number that are 
lost in the maturing period and the number of years they 
have lived, and also the number that die in the effective 
stage and the duration of their labors, it is easy to draw 
a comparison between them and show the cost, in years, of 
creating and maturing human power, and the return it 
makes in labor in compensation. By this double measure- 
ment of life in its incompleteness and in its fulness it is 
found that for every 1000 years expended in the develop- 
ing period upon all that are born, both those who die and 
those who survive the period from birth to 20, the conse- 
quent laboring and productive years are : In ISTorway, 
1881 years; in Sweden, 1Y49 years; in England, 1688 
years; in the United States, 1664 years; in France, 1398 
years ; and in Ireland, 1148 years." 

But it is not only between the populations of distinct 
countries that such differences in the duration of the 
economic force appear. Important differences in this re- 
spect are shown by mortuary statistics to exist between 
occupations. Thus the excessive mortality of the " dusty 



^50 years, i.e. from 20 to 70 years of age. 



36 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

trades" has long been the subject of scientific and official 
inquiry. The highly injurious effects upon the lungs of 
the dust of cotton and ilax mingled with " China clay" 
and other poisonous ingredients, producing a haze in the 
atmosphere of some factories, and rising in a palpable cloud 
in others, have been thorougldy investigated and exposed 
by Drs. Hirt' and Buchanan." In the " dry-grinding" of 
the metals, the deadly influences are even more positive.^ 
The following description of the steel-dust in a needle-fac- 
tory will suffice for our present purpose of illustration. 
" I smelt the dust from one such manufactory before I was 
within 70 or 80 yards of it, and though in an open field ; 
and I could isee the dust floating away like a cloud. It 
not only covers the roof and windows on which it settles 
with a browTi rusty coat, till in time the glass becomes ob- 
scured almost as if it were painted, but so corrodes them 
as to make the slates and even the glass crumble away. 
The dust collects in the flues which carry it from the 
stove in large black stalactite-like lumps. Two such were 
given me, weighing over two pounds each."* 

Mining may be given as an instance of an occupation 
where nominal wages must be heavily discounted by rea- 
son of its destructive effects on human life. When it is 
remembered that in addition to the great lial)ility to fatal 
accident,^ the amount of carbonic acid gas, which in nature 



* Krankheiten der Arbeiter. 

' Returns to the order of the House of Commons, 13th May, 1872. 

' See the evidence collected by Mr. Jellinger Syraons under the Eng- 
lish Commission of 1841 ; also, Dr. Greenhow's report in 1860, in the 
Third Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. 

* Report of Mr. J. E. White, Asst. Commr. Employment of Women 
and Children, 1865. 

* Sir Thomas Bazley's report for 1870 states the number of deaths 
from accidents in collieries and ironstone mines at 991. In the same 
year 373 persons were killed in works under the Factory acts ; 1378 
were so injured that amputation was required, while the lesser inju- 
ries footed up 16,828. 

" En France, ces accidents sont beaucoup plus rares, et Texploitatioi] 



MORTALITY AMONG OCCUPATIONS. 37 

is 300-350 in 1,000,000, and does not ordinarily exceed 
3000 in tlie stifling atmosphere of factories and workshops, 
often goes up to 20.000 in the air of mines,' the exces- 
sive mortahtj within this occupation will not be a matter 
of wonder. Dr. Scott Allison found the average age of 
the living male heads of families of the collier population 
at Tranent, so far as the same could be ascertained, to be 
34 years, while the average age of the living male heads of 
the agricultural families was nearly 52 years. Dr. Allison 
expressed the belief that these proportions w^ould serve as 
fair indications of the relative conditions of the different 
populations.^ 

" So considerable," says Dr. ITeison, in a recent paper,' 
" is the influence of occupation that the mortality in one 
avocation exceeds that of another by as much as 239 per 
cent." 

Thus taking the period of life 25 to 65, Dr. ISTeison finds 
the mean mortality in the clerical profession to be 1.12 per 
cent ; in the legal, 1.57 ; in the medical, 1.81. In domestic 
service the mortality among gardeners was but .93 ; among 
grooms, 1.26 ; among servants, 1.67 ; among coachmen, 
1.84. The effect of out-door exposure in all kinds of weather 
is here shown alike in the case of the physician and the 
coachman. Of several branches of manufacture, the paper 
manufacture showed a mean mortality of 1 .45 ; the tin 
manufacture, of 1.61; the iron manufacture, of 1.75; the 
glass manufacture, of 1.83 ; the copper manufacture, of 
2.16 ; the lead manufacture, of 2.24 ; the earthenware man- 
ufacture* of 2.57. Among the different kinds of mining 



des mines n'a jamais ete mise au nombre des industries qui creent una 
position insupportable aux ouvriers." — Theodore Fix, Les Classes 
Ouvrieres, p. 146. 

^ Dr. Angus Smith, Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1865, p. 241. 

^ Report of the Poor-Law Commissioners of 1842, p. 200. 

^ Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, July, 1872, p. 98. 

* The mortality among the " china-scourers" is something fright- 
ful '- In all the process the operatives are exposed to the inhaling of 



3? TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

ijidustry the range is even greater. Thus the mean mor 
tality of iron-miners is 1.80 ; of coal-miners, 1.82 ; of tin, 
miners, 1.99 ; of lead-miners, 2.50 ' ; of copper-miners, 
3.17.' 

But it is not alone by death that the laboring power is 
prematurely destroyed. The agricultural laborer of Eng- 
land, for example, who is long lived, often becomes crip- 
pled early by rheumatism due to exposure and privation. 
" Then he has to work for 4 shillings or 5 shillings per 
week, supplemented scantily from the rates, and at last to 
come, for the rest of his life, on the rates altogether. Such 
is, I will not call it the life, but the existence or vegetation, 
of the Devon peasant. He hardly can keep soul and body 
together.'" 

In the same country, Mr. Dudley Baxter states, there are 
40,000 men out of less than 400,000 in the building trades 
who between 55 and 65 are considered as past hard work. 
In other trades, he says, a man is disabled at 55 or 50. A 
coal-backer is considered past work at 40." 

I can not better close this protracted chapter than with 
the following words taken from the address of Sir Stafford 
Northcote, as President of the British Social Science Asso- 
ciation : " A man who earns a pound a week is not neces- 
sarily twice as well off as a man who earns 10 shillings. 

the fine dust witli which the air of the different workshops is charged, 
and which dust the finer it is the longer it fioats in the atmosphere 
and tlie more dangerous it becomes." — Ibid., p. 109. 

^ " Tlie diseases engendered by lead-mining may be stated as asthma 
and chronic bronchitis." — Ibid., p. 103. 

^ The heat in copper-mines was found by Dr. Greenhow to be very 
much greater than in tin-mines. In one mine which he visited the 
temperature was 125°. " Steam was coming out of the shaft in 
volumes at the time of inspection." 

* Letter of Canon Girdlestone to Mr. Heath, " Peasantry of Eng 
land," p. 100. 

* National Income, pp. 41, 43. 



NOMINAL AND UEAL WAGES. 39 

You must take into account the amount of work which 
they respectively have to do for their money, the nmnber 
of hours they are employed, the amount of strain upon the 
body and on the brain, the chance of accident, the general 
effect upon the health and upon the duration of life.'" 

^Transactions, 1869, p, 18. 



CHAPTER III. 

NOMINAL AND REAL COST OF LABOR. 

Another distinction which needs to be strongly marked 
is that between Wages and the Cost of Labor. 

In treating wages as high or low we occupy the laborer's 
point of view ; in treating the cost of labor as high or low 
we occupy the point of view of the employer. Wages are 
high or low according to the abundance or scantiness of the 
necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life which the laborer 
can command, without particular reference to the value of 
the serxdce which he renders to the employer therefor. 
The cost of labor, on the other hand, is high or low accord- 
ing as the employer gets an ample or a scanty return for 
what he pays the laborer, whether the same be expressed 
in money or in commodities for consumption, and this 
without the least respect to the well-being of the laborer. 

Now this distinction is not of importance merely because 
such a distinction can be drawn, and the same object look- 
ed at from different points of view. JSTot only are the 
points of view here diametrically opposed, but the objects 
contemplated are not necessarily the same, so that high 
wages do not imply a high cost of labor, or low wages a low 
cost of labor. A sufficient demonstration of this, for the 
present moment, is found in the well-known fact that em- 
ployers usually take on their low^est-paid laborers last, and 



NOMINAL AND REAL COST OF LAB OB. 41 

discharge them first.' The explanation is found in the 
varying 

EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. 

The extent to which this consideration is popularly neg- 
lected may be seen by recurring to any discussion of the 
question of " protection," whether in the legislature or in 
the public press. A day's labor is almost universally taken 
as the unit of measure in determining the cost of similar 
products in different countries. In fact, " a day's labor" 
conveys scarcely a more definite idea than the boy's com- 
parison, " big as a piece of chalk," or " long as a string." 
The mere announcement that a day's labor can be had in 
one country for 10 cents, in another for 50, while in a third 
it commands $1.50, conveys to the mind of one familiar 
with the statistics of industry not even an impression as to 
the comparative cost of labor in the several countries. Yet 
it has been held by a large party in the United States to 
be conclusive of the question of " protection," that labor- 
ers in other countries are more scantily remunerated than 
in our own. The avowed object of protective tariffs here 
has been to keep wages from sinking to the level of Em'ope 
and Asia. The allusions to " pauper labor" Avhich crowd 
the speeches of Clay, Stewart, and Kelley have sig- 
nificance only as it is assumed that a day's labor in one 
place is the economical equivalent of a day's labor any- 
where, and that one man's labor is effective in the same 
degree as that of any other man. 

It is, however, very far from the truth that a day's labor 
is always and everywhere the same thing. We can 
scarcely take the estimate adopted by Lord Mahon,"^ that 

'Masters " prefer those laborers who earn the most wages." — Mr. 
Chadwick, Statistical Journal, xxv. 510. 

Sir Joseph Whit worth, tlie great manufacturer of cannon, told Mr. 
Chadwick that " he could not afford to work his machines with a horse 
that cost less than £30." — Ibid. 

'^ History of England, vii. pp. 229, 230. 



-42 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

an English wood-sawyer will perform as mucli work in the 
same time as thirty-two East-Indians, as giving the general 
ratio' between labor in the two conntries ; yet, on the 
other hand, the comparison is not absolutely an extreme 
one. The difference between an English woodsawyer, 
before a pile of hickory cordwood, and an effeminate East- 
Indian, accustomed to think it a day's job to saw off a 
few lengths of bamboo, is not so great as that which would 
exist between a Maine mast-man and a Bengalee at the 
foot of a -lO-inch pine. The one would lay the monster 
low in half a day, the other might peck at it a week and 
scarcely get through the bark. In the contests of industry 
the civilized, organized, disciplined, and highly-equipped 
nations may safely entertain much the same contempt for 
barbarous antagonists as in the contests of war. " The wolf 
cares not how many the sheep be," said one conqueror ; 
" The thicker the grass," said another, " the easier it is 
mown." So vast are the differences in this matter of the 
efficiency of labor that it is difficult to write respecting 
them without producing the impression of a disposition to 
exaggerate, if the reader has not specially studied the con- 
ditions of production and is unacquainted with the statis- 
tics of industry. Yet in sober earnest we may borrow the 
language of Ednnmd Burke respecting the political adapt- 
ations of men, and say that, in industry as in government, 
men of different nationalities may be regarded as so many 
different kinds of animals. 

The testimony to the varying efficiency of labor comes 

' Prof. Senior, in liis Lectures on Wages, stated the average annual 
wages of labor in Hindostan at from one pound to two pounds troy of 

silver against nine pounds to fifteen pounds troy in England 

Mr. Finnie, who was engaged by the Madras Government as superin- 
tendent of the cotton experiment from 1845-9, says, " the interest ol 
the money invested in the purchase of a laborer in America, added to 
the actual cost of his maintenance, would pay for nine able-bodied men 
in India." — Wheeler's Cotton Cultivation, p. 100. 



NATIONALITY IN LABOR. 43 

from so many som'ces that our only clifScnlty is that of 
selection. The comparison of the English with the Irish 
laborer, whether as a cottar tenant at home or working 
for hire in the northern counties of England, used to be a 
favorite one with economists before the famine and the 
emigration. Of late this disparagement of Irish labor has 
become infrequent. In the last century Arthur Young, 
the eminent traveller, who spent two years near Cork as 
the manager of a large estate, declared an Essex laborer at 
2 shillings 6 pence a day to be cheaper than a Tipperary 
laborer at 5 pence. The improvement in the condition of 
the Irish peasant and in the methods of industry in Ireland 
was very marked in the seventy years which next follow- 
ed ; but in 1845 Dr. Kane, in his work on the Industrial 
Resources of that country, placed the number of native 
laberers requisite for a given production at two or more 
where one English laborer would suffice (pp. 397-9). In 
the iron manufactui-e he gives the ratio as three to one. 

In the same manner the Russian serf was, up to the time 
of the Emancipation, often adduced as illustrating the low 
efficiency of brutalized and underfed labor. Thus Prof. 
Jones says : "In spite of the dearness of provisions in 
England and their cheapness in Russia, the mowing a quan- 
tity of hay which M^ould cost an English farmer half a 
copeck, will cost a Russian farmer three or four copecks." 

But it is not only in comparison with the oppressed 
laborers of Ireland and with the serfs of Russia that the 
superiority of English labor has been asserted on high 
authority. Mr. Edwin Rose, long employed as an operative 
engineer in France and Germany, testified before the Fac- 
tory Commission, forty years and more ago, that it required 
fully twice as many hands to perform most kinds of fac- 
tory work in France and Switzerland as in England ; and 
the statistics of per capita product and of the ratio between 
hands and machines amply bore out Mr. Rose's statement. 
The estimate of Mr. Briavoinne, founded on the total pro- 
duction of Belgium, gave 116 pieces of cloth printed foi 



44 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

each workman per annum. The production of certain 
establishments, liowever, was estimated as high as 300 
pieces. At the saiue time the workmen of the great 
establishment of Ainsworth & Co., in England, were turn- 
ing out 1000 pieces per head. In cotton-spinning, again, 
we iind from the best international statistics available that 
the number of spindles attended by a single operative to-day 
in England ranges from two to four times the correspond- 
ing nmnber on the Continent.' The statistics of the iron 
industry of France show that on the average 42 men are 
employed to do the same work in smelting pig iron, as is 
done by 25 men at the Clarence Factories on the Tees. 
And so it comes about that, while wages are higher in 
England than in any other country of Europe, English 
manufactures have to be excluded by heavy duties from 
competition with the so-called cheaper labor^ of the Con- 
tinent. 



' " In the weaving-mills a Russian rarely has the care of more 
than two looms, while in England a weaver will frequently look 
after six." (Report of H. B. M. Consul Egerton on the Factory 
System of Russia, 1873, p. 111.) Mr. Batbie states that the English 
farmers on the shores of the Hellespont prefer to give 10 pounds 
sterling a year for Greek laborers to giving 3 pounds for Turk- 
ish laborers. (Nouveau Cours de I'Econumie, i. 7.i.) Even with the 
best Continental labor there is a decided inferiority to English 
rates of production. In Switzerland the number of hands employed 
per 1000 spindles does not average less than 8 to 8|, against 7 in Eng- 
land. (Report of Mr. Gould on the Factory System of Switzerland, 
1873, p. 129.) 

In England, moreover, it should be noted, the machinery is almost 
uniformly run at a speed not known on the Continent. 

^ Whereas female labor in the cotton manufacture is paid at from 
12s. to 15s. a week in Great Britain ; at from 7s. Zd. to 9s. Id. in 
France, Belgium, and Germany ; at from 2s. M,. to 3s. l\d. in Rus- 
sia, the one thing which is most dreaded by the Continental manufac- 
turers everywhere is British competition. The demand for protection 
is loudest in France, Austria, and Russia, where the average wages 
reach their minimum. . . . 

The average price of labor per day for puddlers is 7s. Qd. to 7s. 
lOd. in Staffordshire ; 6s. 4d. in France ; and from 4s. Id. to 5s. in 



NATIONALITY IN LABOR. 45 

But by far the most important body of evidence on the 
varying efficiency of labor is contained in the treatise of 
Mr. Thomas Brassey, M.P., entitled " Work and Wages," 
published in 1872. Mr. Brassey's father was perhaps the 
greatest " captain of industry" the world has ever seen, 
having been engaged, between "1834 and 1870, in the con- 
struction of railways in England, France, Saxony, Austria, 
Hungary, Moldavia, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Canada, Aus- 
tralia, the Argentine Republic, Syria, Persia, and India. 
" There were periods in his career," says Sir Arthur Plelps,' 
" during which he and his partners were giving employ- 
ment to 80,000, upon works requiring seventeen millions 
(sterling) of capital for their completion." The aggregate 
length of the railways thus constructed appears to have ex- 
ceeded six thousand five hundred miles. The chief value 
of Mr. Brassey, Jr.'s work is derived from his possession 
of the full and authentic labor-accounts of his father's 
transactions. " Frenchmen, Belgians, Germans, Italians, 
Russians, Spaniards, and Danes came under the close in- 
spection of Mr. Brassey and his agents ; and we are told 
how the men of these various nationalities acquitted them- 
selves in their respective employments."' Some of the 
results of this vast experiment of labor are given by Mr. 
Brassey, Jr., in his chapter on the Cost of Labor. 

On the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada the French- 
Canadian laborers received 3s. Qd. a day, while the 
Englishmen received from 5.s. to Qs. a day ; " but it was 
found that the English did the greatest amount of work 
for the money."^ 

Contrasting the wages paid on an English railway, 35. 
to 3s. Qd. a day, with those paid on an Irish road. Is. 6d. 



Belgium. Yet tlie average price of merchant bar-iron was £6 10s. in 
England, £7 in Belgium, £8 in France. — Mr. D. A. Wells' reijorts, as 
Special Commissioner U. S. Eevenue. 

^ Brassey's Life and Labors, p. 160. ^ Ibid., Preface, xvi, 

* Work and Wages, p. 87. 



46 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

to Is. Sd., Mr. Brassey remarks, " Yet with tliis immense 
difference in the rate of wages, sub-contracts on the Irish 
railway were let at the same prices which had been pre- 
viously paid in South Staffordshire.'" 

" In India, although the cost of daily labor ranges from 4^ 
to 6d. a day, mile for mile the cost of railway work is 
about the same as in England." " In Italy, masonry and 
other work requiring skilled labor is rather dearer than 
in England.'" 

" Great pains were taken to ascertain the relative indus- 
trial capacity of the Englishman^ and the Frenchman on 
the Paris and Houen line ; and on comparison of half a 
dozen ' pays,' it was found that the capacity of the English- 
man w^as to that of the Frenchman as five to three."* 
" Mining is perhaps the most exhausting and laborious of 
all occupations. It has been found that in this description 
of w^ork the Englisli miner surpasses the foreigner all over 
the world. On the Continent, long after earth-work and 
all the other operations involved in the construction of 
railways had been committed to the native workmen, Eng- 
lish miners were still employed in the tunnels." 

" In the quarry at Bonnieres, in which Frenchmen, 
Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by side, 
the Frenchman received three, the Irishman four, and 
the Englishman six francs a day. At those different 
rates, the Englishman was found to be the most advanta- 
geous workman of the three."^ 

Such differences in industrial efficiency as have been in- 
dicated may exist not only between nations, but between 
geographical sections of the same people. The very mi- 

' Work and Wajres, p. 69. ^ Ibid., p. 90. 

^ Four tliousand Englishmen were sent over to work on this road 
—Ibid., p. 79. 

Two thousand English and Scotch were sent to Australia to work on 
the Queensland line. 

* Ibid., p. 115. ' Ibid., p. 83. 



NOMINAL AND REAL COST OF LABOR. 47 

nute and careful researches of M. Dupin in the early part of 
this century seemed to establish a decided superiority in 
productive power of the artisans of northern over those 
of southern France. In England the superiority of the 
agricultural population of the northern counties is unmis- 
takably very great. " Any one," says Mr. Mundella, M.P., 
" who has witnessed agricultural operations in the west 
of England, will agree that the ill-paid and ill-fed laborer 
of those parts is dearer at 9s. or ] Os. per week than the 
Nottinghamshire man at 16s.'" " It would be a great 
mistake," says Mr. Walter Bagehot, in the J^conomist,^ " to 
put down as equal the day's hire of a Dorsetshire laborer 
and that of a Lincolnshire laborer. It would be like having 
a general price for steam-engines 7iot specify ing the horse- 
power. The Lincolnshire man is far the more efficient 
man of the two." 

From a single page of the Report for 1869 of the 
Commission on the Employment of Children, Women and 
Young Persons in Agriculture, I extract the following 
testimony respecting the inefficiency of the laborers of 
Berkshire : " I would rather pay a Northumbrian hind 
16 shillings a week than a Berks carter 12 shillings," 
testifies one farm bailiff. " Our men here," says an- 
other, " are very inferior to Scotch laborers f two men 
there do as much as three here." Another bailiff testifies 
that " he was obliged to employ as many men in Berkshire, 
at certain kinds of work, as he had been accustomed to 
employ of women in Perthshire."" 

* Social Sc. Trans., 1868, p. 524. ^ January 24tli, 1874. 

' " I protest," so writes a farmer, " that one of the Scotchmen whom 
I formerly employed would do as much work as two or even three 
SufEolk laborers. It ' makes one's flesh creep ' to see some of the lat- 
ter at work." — Clifford, Agricultural Lock-out of 1874, p. 25, note. 

* Second Report, p. 105. " I have myself in Northumberland heard 
^ Northumbrian farmer declare that one of the strong big-boned wo- 
men who worked in his fields was worth mucli more than any average 
southern laborer." — Clifford, Agric. Lock-out of 1874, p. 25. 



48 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

In view of such wide differences in the prodnctive power 
of individuals, communities, and peoples, no attemj^t at a 
philosophy of wages can omit to inquire into the causes 
of the varying efficiency of labor. These causes I shall 
enumerate under six heads ; hut the possible eifect of no 
one cause will be fully apprehended unless it be held 
constantly in mind that the value of the laborer's services to 
the employer is the net result of two elements, one positive, 
one negative, namely, worh and waste / that in some degree 
waste, using the term in its broadest sense to express the 
breakage and the undue wear and tear of implements and 
machinery, the destruction or impairment of materials,' 
the cost of supervision and o^'ersight to keep men from 
idling or blundering, and, iinally, the hinderance of many 
by the fault or failure of one,^ is inseparable from work ; 
and that, with the highly finished products of our modern 
industry, with its complicated and often delicate macliine- 
ry, and its costly materials, themselves perhaps the result 
of many antecedent processes, it is frequently a question of 



* On this point of waste I select two illustrations. The first is 
taken from an address of George J. Holyoake, the historian of Co-opera- 
tion : 

" It has been calculated that the workiiis; colliers at Whitwood and 
Methley could, by simply taking the tr<)ul)le to get the coal in large 
lumps, and by reducing the proportions of slack, add to the colliery 
profits £1500 a year. If they would further take a little extra care below 
ground in keeping the best coal separate from the inferior, they could 
add another £1500 to the profits." (Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1865, p. 
482.) All this without diminishing their own earnings. 

The second is the result of an experiment, noticed in the Statistical 
Journal (xxviii., pp. 32, 33), for the economy of coal in an engine-fur- 
nace, through giving the stokers a share in the money value of what- 
ever saving might be effected. The result was to reduce the consump- 
tion of fuel, without loss of power, from 30 to 17. 

^ H. B. M. Consul Egerton, in his admirable report of 1873 (Textile 
Factories), notes Lhe great irregularity of attendance at work in Rus- 
sia. " It is therefore essential to have a large staff of supernumeraries 
who have learnt their work, so as to be ready to supply the vacant 
places."— P. 113. 



CAUSES OF VARTINO EFFICIENCY. 49 

more or less waste whether work shall be worth having' 
or not. 

The various causes which go to create differences in in- 
dustrial efficiency may be grouped under six heads, as fol- 
lows : 

I. Peculiarities of stock and breeding. 

II. The meagreness or liberality of diet. 

III. Habits, voluntary or involuntary, respecting clean- 
liness of the person, and purity of air and water. 

lY. The general intelligence of the laborer. 

Y. Technical education and industrial environment. 

YI. Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing 
out of self-respect and social ambition, and the laborer's 
interest in the results of his work. 

The first reason which we are called to recognize for 
the great differences in industrial efficiency which exist 
among men is found in peculiarities of stock and breeding. 
Of the causes which have produced such widely diverse 
types" of manhood as the Esquimaux, the Hottentot, and 
the Bengalee at the one extreme, and the Frenchman, the 
Englishman, and the American of to-day at the other, '^ it 
is not necessary to speak here at all. The effects of local 
climate and national food, continued through generations, 
upon the physical structure, have become so familiar to the 
public through the writings of geographers and ethnologists 
that they may fairly be assumed for om^ present purpose. 
The scope and power of these causes are far more likely to 

^ " It may appear incredible," remarks Mr. Carleton Tiiffnell, tlie 
Poor-Law Commissioner, " that a great demand for labor may exist 
simultaneously with a multitude of people seeking employment and 
unable to find it. The real demand is not simply for labor, but trained 
labor, efficient labor, intelligent labor." 

* M. Batbie states the results of certain experiments with the dyna- 
mometer by which it appears that while the figure 50 represents the 
sheer lifting-weight of a native of" Van Diemen's Land, 71 represents 
that of an Anglo-Australian cultivator. — Nouveau cours de I'EcoiaDmie 
politique, i. 70. 



50 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

be magnified than disparaged by the scientific spirit of 
this age. But we have also to recognize large differences 
as existing between far advanced and highly civilized peo- 
ples as to average height, strength, manual dexterity, 
accuracy of vision, health, and longevity. 

Thus, for example, the mean height of the Belgian 
male was given by MM. Quetelet and Villerme, about 
1836, as 5 feet 6y\ inches ; that of the Frenchman, as 5 feet 
4 inches ; that of the Englishman, 5 feet 9^ inches. Such 
differences in stature exist as well between sections of the 
same country ; thus the Breton peasants are notably defi- 
cient even as measured by the low French standard ; while 
the proportion of " tall men" (*',<?., 6 feet) examined for the 
British army was out of every 10,000 English, lO-l ; out of 
every 10,000 Scotchmen, 194 ; out of every 10,000 Irish- 
men, 91.' 

At the same time, the largest proportion of rejections 
for unsoundness was among the Iri.sh, the least among the 
Scotch. MM. Quetelet and Villerme give the following 
determinations of mean weight for the same three coun- 
tries : 



' Tliis statement is taken from Mr. Thornton " On Labor/' p. 1(5, n. 
Of the (very) " tall men" (6 feet 3 inches) enlisted in the U. S. army, 
1861-5, there were of each 100,000— of English birth, 103 ; of Scotch, 
178 ; of Irish, 84 (Statistical Memoirs of the Sanitary Commission, p. 159) ; 
wliile of the " short men" (under 5 feet 1 inch) there were in 100,000 
—of English, 690 ; of Scotch, 610 ; and of Irish, only 450, the proportion- 
al number of Germans in this class rising to 770, and of Frenchmen to 
950. (Ibid., p. 177.) The mean height of the native soldiers was much 
reduced by the enlistment of large numbers of very young persons ; 
but if we take the soldiers from 35 years upwards, we find the natives 
of the United States surpassing in stature those of every other nation 
ality. Thus the mean height of soldiers from New-England was, in 
inches, 68.300 ; New- York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 68.096 ; 
Ohio and Indiana, 68.980; Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, 68.781 ; 
Kentucky and Tennessee, 69.274, etc. ; while the mean height of 
soldiers born in Canada was 67.300 ; England, 66.990 ; Scotland, 67.647 ; 
Ireland, 67.090 ; France, Belgium, and Switzerland, 66.714 ; Germany, 
66.718 ; Scandinavia, 67.299. (Ibid., pp. 104, 105.) 



D1FFEBENGE8 IN NATIONAL PHYSIQUE. 51 

Lbs. avoirdupois. 

Belgian, male (Brussels and environs) 140.49 

Frencliman (Paris and environs) 136.89 

Englishman (Cambridge) 150.98 

There is reason to suspect that these are all pitched a 
little high. Among the sections of the American Union 
the difference in mean weight, as determined by measure- 
ments during the war, 1861-5, was very decided. Thus of 
men weighed in health, those from ]Srew-England averaged 
140.05 lbs.; those from l^ew-York, I^ew- Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania, 141.39 ; those from Ohio and Indiana, 145.99 ; 
those from Kentucky and Tennessee, 150.58.' 

Such and other physical differences on which it is not 
needful to dwell are due in part to the influences of local 
climate and national diet, but in part, also, to causes social 
and industrial. 

Of social causes amj^le, in their aggregate effect, to pro- 
duce much of the difference between the Englishman 
and the Frenchman of to-day, may be instanced the war 
system, by which, in France, the principle of natural 
selection has been violently reversed, and the men of 
superior size, strength, and courage have, generation 
after generation, been shut up in barracks or torn 
to pieces on the battle-field, while the feebler males 
have been left at home to propagate the stock. It 
is beyond question that not a little of the difference 
in industrial efficiency which makes a French navvy 
dear at 3 francs, while an English navvy is cheap at 5^. 6cZ., 
is due to the wholesale operation of this cause among the 
French people during the eighty years since 1793, during 
which time the standard of the army has been reduced 
from 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 1|- inch. During the same 



^ Statistical Memoirs U. S. Sanitary Commission, p. 403. As was 
remarked respecting niean height, the average of the native soldiers of 
the U. S. army was brought down by the great number of boys en- 
listed. 



52 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

period the Frencli horse was steadily gaining in size and 
weight. 

Among the industrial causes tending to create such 
differences in laboring power we may instance the em- 
ployment of children of tender age at hard labor and under 
circmnstances of exposure ; and the employment of wo- 
men, first, in work wholly unsuited to their sex, as former- 
ly in England in mines, where they were even harnessed 
with cattle to loads of ore, and as now on the pit-banks 
and coke-hearths, and, secondly, at their ordinary work 
with too short an interval after childbearing.' 

Looked at with no eye of charity, but with a strictly 
economical regard, such acts as these constitute a horrible 
waste of industrial force, both in the present and in their 
effects on the laboring power of the next generation. 

At the meeting of the Social Science Association in 
1 870, Mr. George Smith presented a lump of clay weighing 
43 lbs. , which in a wet state he had taken, a few days before, 
off the head of a child 9 years of age, who had daily to 
walk 12|- miles in a brickyard, half that distance with such 
a burden. " The clay," said Mr. Smith, " was taken from 
the child, and the calcidations made by me, in the presence 
of both master and men.'" Two or three instances taken 
at random from the report' of Mr. J. E. AVliite, Assist- 



' Speaking alike of the weaving-slieds of tlie cotton districts and of 
tlie woollen districts, Dr. Bridges and Mr. Holmes, in their report to the 
Local Government Board, in 1873, say : " The work is done in the 
great majority of cases by women ; a considerable portion of these are 
married, and the practice of working nntil the last stage of pregnancy, 
and of returning to work within a month, sometimes within a fortnight, 
or even a week, of childbirth, is as common in the West Riding (of 
York) as in Lancashire." (Report, p. 33, cf. pji. 38,39, 55.) An old fac- 
tory surgeon says : " I regard the mother's return to the mill as almost 
a sentence of death to the child." It is also a fruitful source of pei 
manent injury to the mother herself. 

2 Transactions, p. 537. 

' Fourth Report (1865) of the Children's Employment Commission 
of 1863. 



EXGES81VE LABOR IN CHILDHOOD. 53 

ant Commissioner, 1865, will perhaps help the American 
reader to appreciate the scope and force of the cause we are 
adducing. A boy, now 11, who went at 9 years old to 
hardening and tempering crinoline steel, worked there 
from 7 A.M. till 9|- p.m. four nights a week " for many 
and many a month," " many a time till 12 at night," and 
once or twice worked from Y in the morning all through 
the next night and day, and on till 12 the following night. 
Another, at 9 years old, sometimes made three 12-hour 
shifts running, and, when 10, has made two days and two 
nights running. Another, now 13, at a former place 
worked from 6 p.m. till noon next day for a week toge- 
ther, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from 
Monday morning till Tuesday night. 

]!^or is it only in mines or factories, in a stifling atmo- 
sphere and amid poisonous exhalations, that children are, 
even yet, in happy England, exposed to the influences 
which stunt, distort, and weaken them, and lower the 
average vitality of the population, and with this its indus- 
trial efficiency. The driving of children six, eight, and ten 
years' afield to work for 12 and 14 hours, whether under a 
hot sun or against chilling, cutting winds, must tend to 
disorganize the cartilages of the joints, to produce curva- 
ture of the spine, to dwarf the growth, and to prepare the 
way for an early breaking down from rheumatism and 
scrofula. 

I repeat I have not adduced these facts and incidents for 
charity's sake, or in any sentimental vein, but wholly for ' 
their economical significance, and I propose to use them 
in strict subordination to recognized economical principles. 

II. A further reason for the greater industrial efiiciency 
of one laborer than of another, and of one class or nation of 
laborers than of another, is a most vulgar one, namely, better 



* See tlie reports of the Commission of 1862 on tlie Employment of 
Children, and of the Commission of 1867 on the Employment of Wo- 
men and Children, 



54 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

feeding. The human stomach is to the animal frame what 
the furnace is to the steam-engine. It is there the force is 
generated which is to drive the machine. Tlie power with 
which an engine will work will, up to a certain point, in- 
crease with every addition made to the fuel in the furnace ; 
and, within the limits of thorough digestion and assimi- 
lation, it is equally true that the power which tlie lahorer 
will carry into his work will depend on the character and 
amount of his food. What the employer will get out of 
his workman will depend, therefore, very much on what 
he first gets into him. Not only are bone and muscle to 
be built up and kept up by food, but every stroke of the 
arm involves an expenditure of nervous energy, which is 
to be supplied only through the alimentary canal. What 
a man can do in 24 hours will depend very much on what 
he can have to eat in those 24 hours ; or perhaps it would 
be more correct to say, what he has had to eat the 24 hours 
previous. If his diet be liberal, his work may be mighty. 
If he be underfed, he must underwork. So far away as 
the Hundred Years' War, Englishmen were accustomed to 
assign a more generous diet as the reason why their " beef- 
fed knaves" so easily vancpiished their traditional enemies, 
and even into this century the island writers were accus- 
tomed to speak as if still for the same reason, in work at 
least if not in war, 

" Upon one pair of English legs did march three Frenchmen.'" 

Of course in this, as in every other department of 

* " Each Frenchman consumes on an average 16 oz. of wheaten bread 
a day ; each Englishman, 33 oz. ; the former, If oz. of meat ; the latter, 
6 oz." — Alison, Europe, 1815-51, ch. xvii., sec. 126. 

" Des experiences ont demontre que I'ouvrier frauQais, lorsqu'il est 
aussi bien nourri qu'un ouvrier anglais rend a pen pres autant de tra- 
vail." — Batbie, Nouveau Cours de I'Economie politique, i. 71. 

I should be disposed to believe that a somewhat greater difference 
would remain, notwithstanding equiv^aleut subsistence, than M. Bat- 
bie's patriotism will allow him to confess. The causes adduced un 
der the previous head must count for much. 



BELATI0N8 OF FOOD TO WORK. 55 

expenditure, there is an economical maximum, where the 
greatest proportional return is received. Beyond this, 
though an increase of food may yield an increase of force, 
it does not yield a proportional increase, just as in a furnace 
with a given height of chimney, the combustion of a given 
nmnber of pounds of coal to the square foot of grate-sur- 
face yields the economical maximum of power. More fuel 
bm-ned will evaporate more water, but not proportionally 
more. With the laborer the economical maximum of 
expenditure on food is reached far short of the point at 
which " gorging and guzzling" begin ; it shuts off every 
thing that partakes of luxury or ministers to delicacy ; yet 
till that maximum be reached every addition to food brings 
a proportional, or more than proportional, addition of 
working strength. To stop far short of that limit and 
starve the laboring man is as bad economy as to rob the 
engine of its fuel. Thus with a furnace of a given height, 
having for its economical maximum 12 lbs. of coal to the 
square foot of grate-surface, the consumption of 6 lbs. 
might yield far less than one half the power, while 3 lbs. 
might scarcely serve to keep the furnace warm under the 
constant loss by radiation and the cooling influence of the 
water in the boilers. In much the same way a laborer 
may be kept on so low an allowance of food that it will 
all go to keeping the man alive, and nothing be left to 
generate working power.' From this low point, where the 
bad economy of starving the laborer is manifest even to 
the most selfish or stupid overseer, up to a point where it 
requires a great deal of good sense and more magnanimity 
of character on the part of the employer to make him feel 
sure of a return for added expenditure, there is a steady 



^ Mr. R. R. Torrens, M.P., stated, at the meeting of tlie Social Sci- 
ence Association in 1867, that when he was employed in sending out 
emigrants from Ireland in 1840, he found that " a large portion of the 
Irish people were living on a kind of potato called ' lumpers,' which 
were so mferior in quality that even pigs could not fatten on them."— 
Transactions, p. 670. 



56 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

progression in working power as the diet becomes more 
ample and nutritious. 

IS^ow this principle, if I have correctly stated it, as to 
the economical relation between food and laboring force, 
becomes of validity not oidy to explain in part the great 
differences in industrial efficiency which we have seen to 
exist among bodies of laborers, but also to show how, in cases 
where the subsistence of the laborer is below the economi- 
cal maximum, a rise of wages may take place without a 
loss to profits. 

That a large portion of the wage-laboring class are 
kept below the economical limit of subsistence there can 
be no doubt. " To-day, in the west of England," says 
Prof. Fawcett, " it is impossible for an agricultural laborer 
to eat meat more than once a week.'" Of the Devon peas- 
ant Canon Girdlestone writes : " The laborer breakfasts on 
teakettle broth — hot water poured on bread and flavored 
with onions ; — dines on bread and hard cheese at '2d. a 
pound, with cider very washy and sour ; and sups on pota- 
toes or cabbage greased with a tiny bit of fat bacon. lie 
seldom more than sees or smells butcher's meat."^ Little 
wonder is it that the Devon laborer is a different sort of 
animal from the Lincoln or Lothian laborer. No Devon 
farmer would doubt that it was bad economy to keep his 
cattle on a low, unnutritious diet. No reputable Devon 

' Pol. Econ.,p. 471. Lord Brabazon, in liis report (p. 54) on the 
condition of the industrial classes of France, 1872, cites the opinion 
of Dr. Cenveilhier that the French population are, as a rule, insuffi- 
ciently nourished. " Many a French factory hand never has any thing 
better for his breakfast than a large slice of common sour bread, 
rubbed over with an onion so as to give it a flavor." (Lord Brabazon, 
p. 53.) Mr. Locock writes from the Netherlands (Report of 1870, p. 
19) : " Meat is rarely tasted by the working classes in Holland. It 
forms no part of the bill of fare either for the man or his family." 
From Belgium Mr. Pakenham reports : " Very many have for their 
entire subsistence but potatoes with a little grease, brown or black 
bread, often bad, and for their drink a tincture of chickory." (Re^ 
ports of 1871, p. 20.) 

2 Heath's English Peasantry, p. 100. 



UNDERFED LABOR. 57 

farmer would reason that, as he was but just able now to 
make a living profit, he would be ruined, for good and for 
all, were he to give his horses enough to keep them in 
good condition for work. And if one were found so nig- 
gardly and so foolish as to act and talk thus, his neighbors 
at least would tell him that the very reason why he made 
such bare profits now was that he starved his stock, and 
that with better feeding they would better earn their 
keep.' Yet the farmers of the west of England, almost as 
a body, when they had to meet the demands of their 
laborers for increase of wages in 1873 and in 1874, under 
the instigation of the Agricultural Union, declared that they 
would be ruined if they paid higher wages ; and there are 
not wanting economists of reputation to corroborate them, 
and assert that it is " physically impossible '" that wages 
should be advanced without impairing profits. Tf there 
is any physical impossibility in the case, it -is that the 
wretched peasants could be better fed without adding to 
the value of their labor to their employers. 

The revelations of the Poor-Law Commission of 1833 
respecting the comparative subsistence of the soldier, the 
agricultural laborer, and the pauper were very striking. 
The soldier, who had active duties and needed to be kept 
in at least tolerable physical condition, received a ration of 
^68 oz., the able-bodied pauper received 151 oz., while the 
independent laborer, sole surviving representative of the 
yeomanry of Crecy and Agincourt, received 122 oz. per 
iveek. Now it goes without saying that when the day 
laborer, toiling from morning till night in the fields, re- 
ceives a smaller amount of nourishment than the sense of 
public decency will allow to be given to paupers, that 

' Sir Joseph Wliitwortli is reported to have said that he could not 
afford to work a horse in his establishment which ate less than 18 lbs. 
of oats a day. 

^ " It is physically impossible that any permanent rise in wages shoiild 
v.ike place without corresponding diminution of profits."— H. Fawcett, 
Pol. Econ.,p. 264. 



58 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

laborer is underfed, in the sense that he must and will ini- 
derwork. 

To avoid multiplying titles, I will in this connection 
mention clothing as in most climates a condition of effi- 
ciency in production. A portion, in some countries a 
large portion, of the food taken into the stomach goes to 
support the necessary warmth of the body. Clothing goes 
to the same object. Within certain limits, it is a matter of 
indifference whether you keep up the temperature of the 
body by putting food into a man or clothing on to him. 
As Mr, Peshine Smith has said, " A sheet-iron jacket put 
around the boiler prevents the waste of heat in the one 
case, just as a woollen jacket about the body of the laborer 
does in the other.'" Here, again, there is an econo- 
mical maximum beyond which expenditure will not be 
justified by the return ; but here, again, it can not be 
doubted that large classes of laborers suffer a great loss of 
industrial efficiency from the want of adequate clothing. 
Prof. Fawcett quotes'' the poor-law inspectors as stating 
that one fifth in number of the population are insufficient- 
ly clothed. Insufficiency of clothing means, of course, fee- 
bleness of working and excessive sickness and mortality. 

But I may be here called to meet an objection to my 
statements under this head, based on the assumed sufficien- 
cy of the sense of self-interest in employers. How, it may 
be asked, do you account for the failure of employers to 
pay wages which will allow their laborers a more liberal 
sustenance, if indeed it is for their own advantage to do 
so? 

In the first place, I challenge the assumption which un- 
derlies the orthodox doctrine of wages, namely, the suf- 
ficiency of the sense of self-interest. Mankind, always 



• Pol. Econ.,p. 107. 

*• Econ.omical Po^itioyH of tl\e Br. Laborer, p. 231, note.^ 



UNDERFED LABOR. 59 

less than wise, and too often foolish to the point of stupidi- 
ty, on the one side, and of fanaticism, on the other, wheth- 
er in government, in domestic life, in the care of their 
bodies, or in tlie care of their souls, do not suddenly be- 
come wise in industrial concerns. The argument for keep- 
ing a laborer well that he may work well applies with 
equal force to the maintenance of a slave. Yet we know, 
by a mass of revolting testimony, that in all comitries 
avarice, the consuming lust of immediate gain, a passion 
which stands in the way of a true and enlarged view of 
self-interest and works unceasing despite to self-interest, 
has always' despoiled the slave of a part of the food and 
clothing necessary to his highest efficiency as a laborer. 
The same argument would apply with equal force to the 
care of livestock. Yet it is the hardest thing in the world 
to bring a body of fanners up to the conviction, and hold 
them there steadily, that it pays to feed cattle well and treat 
them well. England, what with vmending fairs and pre- 
miums,'^ with royal and noble patronage and ensample, and 
with a very limited proprietorship which it might be sup- 
posed could be more easily kept informed as to the real 
economy of agriculture — England, I say, has managed to 
create a public sentiment which keeps her farmers reasona- 
bly up to the standard in this matter of the care of stock ; 

* Where slaves were kept and worked only for purposes of gain. 
Where slavery was a political and social institution, as in the Middle 
States of the American Union, something of grace and kindliness 
might come to climb up about it. 

"^ I have never chanced to hear of any premiums offered in Devon or 
Dorset for the fattest and sleekest, or the most manly and athletic 
" team" of agricultural laborers, though there have been, all honor for 
it ! instances of prizes given for " model cottages." " Comment ! Vos 
cultivateurs consacrent des sommes considerables pour couvrir leurs 
champs d'engrais, vos industriels ne negligent aucun soin, ne reculent 
devant aucune depense pour assurer et faciliter le jeu de leurs ma- 
chines ; et vous, vous negligez de cultiver votre champ le plus fertile, 
de graisser el? de soigner votre machine la plus precieuse, votre ma- 
eliiiie mere, de laquelle toutes les autres dependent, puisqu'elles en 
sout sorties." — Blanqui (aine) Cou.rs d'ficonomie Industrielle, ii. 353., 



60 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

yet even in England the excei3tions are not few ; while, 
the world over, the rule is niggardliness of expenditure 
working deep and lasting prejudice to production. 

I might thus abundantly shelter myself behind the anal- 
ogous cases which have been cited, where true self-interest 
is most conspicuously sacrificed to greed.' But another 
reason appears in the case of the wage-laborer. It is that 
the employer has none of that security which the owner 
of stock or the master of slaves possesses, that what goes 
in food shall come back to him in work. A man buying 
an underfed slave or an underfed ox knows that when he 
has brought his property into good condition, the advan- 
tage will be his ; but the free laborer when he waxes faf 
may, like Jeshunm, kick, and take himself off. There is 
no law yet which gives an employer compensation for 
" unexhausted improvements" in the person of his laborer. 
The employer therefore takes his risk, in respect to all 
subsistence winch goes to Imild up bone and sinew in his 
workmen, that the added laboring jjower may be sold to a 
neighbor or carried away bodily to Australia. 

III. Another reason for diiferences in industrial efficien- 
cy is found in differing habits, whether of choice or neces- 
sity in their origin, respecting cleanliness of the person and 
purity of air and water. The first great prison reformer 
shocked the civilized world with the revelations which he 



' Doubtless race-cliaracteristics have very much to do with the 
ability to subordinate greed to real interests, and to take a large view 
of economy. We should expect to find the Teutonic peoples surpass- 
ing all others in this respect ; the Slavonic peoples far to the rear. 
Mr. Consul Holmes, in his Report to the British Government on the 
Condition of the Industrial Classes of Bosnia in 1871, remarks that the 
Eastern Christians, like the Turks, " look far more to cheapness than 
excellence in what they purchase, and good workmanship and consci- 
entious labor is neither appreciated nor desired " (p. 762). Mr. Consul 
Palgrave makes a similar remark respecting the Anatolians (p. 732). 
" The very appreciation of good work," writes Sir P. Francis from Tur- 
key, " is, I believe, lost." — Report on the Condition of the Industrial 
Classes, 1872, p. 372. 



UNSANITABY ABODES. 61 

made of the abodes of tlie convict classes. Yet, a distiii- 
guislied sanitarian, often quoted in these pages, has said : 
" More filth, worse physical suffering and moral disorder 
than Howard describes as aifecting the prisoners, are to be 
found among the cellar population of the working people 
of Livei-pool, Manchester, or Leeds, and in large portions 
of the metropolis.'" " Out of a population of 85,000 
householders," says Prof. Gairdner, speaking of Glasgow, 
" 30,000 or 35,000 belong to a class who are most dan- 
gerous in a sanitary point of view.'" " Hovels, cellars, 
mere dark dens," says Inglis, in describing the city homes 
of Ireland in 1834, " damp, filthy, stagnant, unwholesome 
places, into which we should not in England put any do- 
mestic animal.'" But even in England and to-day Canon 
Girdlestone says of the homes «f the peasants of Devon : 
" The cottages as a rule, are not fit to house pigs in."" 
Of 309 cottages at Eamsbottom, near Bury, " one of the best 
districts in Lancashire," remarks Col. Sykes,' 13Y had but 
one bedroom each, the aggregate occupants being 777 ; 1Y2 
had two bedrooms each, the aggregate occupants being 
1223. Some of the families occupying a single bedroom 
consisted of from 8 to 13 individuals. At Bristol, out of 
6000 families reported on, 556 occupied part of a i-oom 
only ; 2244 one room only ; the average number of persons 
to a family being 3.46. " One third of the population of 
Scotland in 1861," says Mr. Caird, " hved in houses of one 
room only ; another third in houses of two rooms only.'" 
The subject is not a pleasant one to pursue, but as none 
holds more important relations to the philosophy of wages 
than the one now under consideration, I must ask my 
readers to endure the following descriptions of human 
habitations taken from the Poor-Law Eeport of 1842. 



' Edwin Chadwick. Poor-Law Report, 1843, p. 313. 

2 Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1866, p. 737. 

3 Journey Throughout Ireland, p. 379. 
" Heath's English Peasantry, p. 100. 

' Statistical Journal, xiii. 47. ' Stat. Journal, xxxii. 75. 



62 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

" Shepherd's Buildings consist of two rows of liouses 
with a street seven yards wide between them ; each row 
consists of what are styled back and front houses ; that is, 
two houses placed back to back. There are no yards or 
out-conveniences ; the privies are in the centre of each 
row, about a yard wide ; over them there is part of a sleep- 
ing-room ; there is no ventilation in the bedrooms. Each 
house contains two rooms, namely, a house-place and sleep- 
ing-room above ; each room is about three yards wide and 
four long. In one of these houses there are nine peivons 
belonging to one family, and the mother on the eve of her 
confinement. The cellars are let off as separate dwellings ; 
these are dark, damp, and very low, not more than six feet 
between the ceiling and floor. The street between the 
two rows is seven yards wide, in the centre of which is the 
common gutter, or, more properly, sink, into which all sorts 
of refuse are thrown." — Report, pp. 17, 18, 

This is a description of the cottages of a manufacturing 
village. The same report gives an account of the homes 
of the peasantry of Durham, " built of rul)l)le or unhewn 
stone, loosely cemented." " The chimneys have lost half 
their original height, and lean on the roof with fearful 
gravitation. The rafters are evidently rotten and displaced, 
and the thatch, yawning to admit the wind and wet in 
some parts, and in all parts utterly unfit for its original 
purpose of giving protection from the weather, looks more 
like the top of a dunghill than a cottage. Such is I he ex- 
terior ; and when the hind comes to take possession, he 
finds it no better than a shed. The wet, if it happens to 

rain, is making a puddle on the earth floor They 

have no byre for their cows, nor sties for their pigs ; no 
pumps or wells ; nothing to promote cleanliness or comfort. 
The average size of these sheds is about 24 by 16. They 
are dark and unwholesome ; the windows do 4iot open, 
and many of them are not larger than 20 inches by 16 ; 
and into this place are crowded 8, 10, or even 12 persons." 
—Report, pp. 22, 23. 



UNSANITARY ABODES. 



63 



The climax of possible horror would seem to be reached 
ill the description of the wynds of Edinburgh ; but I will 
not offend the reader's sensibilities by quoting from it. It 
will perhaps be quite as effective to compare the experi- 
ence of sickness in these dens of abomination with that 
of other localities. The following table shows the average 
number of days' sickness suffered in a year by a family in 
the wynds in comparison (1) with the experience of the 
Benefit Societies in Scotland, and (2) with the experience 
of places under sanitary measures. 



Age. 


Benefit Societies. 


Under Sanitary- 
Measures. 


The Wynds. 


Man, 40 


6.9 
4.2 
0.3 


3.75 
3.10 
0.17 


15.1 

11.0 

3.5 


Woman, 30 


Child, 15 






11.3 


5.03 


39.6 



So much for the places ^vhere men live during the half 
of the day devoted to sleep and refreshment. In the 
places where they labor there is not such a dreary monotony 
of squalor and misery. ISTeither indifference nor malignity 
even, on the part of employers could succeed in placing the 
great majority of workingmen so wretchedly. The first 
occupation of man still employs by far the greater part of 
the race, and for them sunlight and air are provided by the 
indefeasible bounty of nature. If the Durham and Devon 
hind does not " sleep all night in Elysimn," he at least 
" sweats all day in the eye of Phoebus." ISTor is it only 
the agriculturist who pursues his= occupation in the open 
air. In no small proportion of the mechanical trades either 
the conditions of the work do not allow the laborer to be 
shut in between walls, or the expense of enclosure out- 
weighs its advantages, and the trade, though it might be 
even better prosecuted under cover, is, in fact, carried on 
out-doors. After all deductions, however, there remain a 
melancholy multitude who are called to breathe the foul 



64 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

air of mines ; to labor in the stifling atmosphere of 
mills and factories, " hazy" or " cloudy" with particles 
irritating to the lungs or poisonous to the blood, and to 
pant through the hours of work in " sweating dens" like 
those which the indignant eloquence of Kingsley' has made 
so painfully familiar to his Englissh and American readers, 
though all verbal description must fall short of the shock- 
ing reality.^ 

I have not dwelt thus at length upon descriptions of 
human habitations unfit for cattle or for swine, for the 
purpose of harrowing the feelings of my readers, or even 
with a view to excite compassion for the condition of the 
working classes. My single object has been to afford illus- 
tration of the influence of the cause we are now consider- 
ing, upon the efficiency of labor. A great part, if not the 
great majority, of the laborers of the M^orld are to-day 
housed thus miserably ; uncounted millions worse. Even 
of those whose lot is more fortunate but a very small pro- 
portion, in any of the older countries, have in their lodging 
the light and air which the least exacting hygiene declares 
to be essential to the harmonious development and adequate 
sustentation of the bodily powers. 

It is in abodes such as have been described that children 
grow to maturity and get the size and strength which are 
to determine their (piality as workers. It is in abodes like 
these that laboring men have to seek repose and refresh- 
ment after the complete exhaustion of a hard day's work ; 
that they breathe the air which istooxydize their blood, and 
eat and undertake to digest the food on which to-morrow's 
work is to be done. What wonder that children gi-ow 
up stunted and weazen and deformed ; that the blood of 
manhood becomes foul and lethargic, the nerves unstrung, 
the sight, on which depends much of the use of all the 



^ In liis Alton Locke. 

* See Report Poor-Law Commission, 1843, pp. 98-104. 



IMPURITY OF WATER. 65 

other powers, weakened or distorted, and the whole tone 
of life' and of labor depressed and intermittent ? 

I have spoken of the dwellings too often inhabited by 
the laboring classes, and of the air which they have to 
breathe. As to the water they have to drink, it will 
suffice hei^e to cite the results of an inspection and chemi- 
cal analysis of 140 specimens of drinking-water made in a 
large number of the cities and towns of Scotland by Dr. 
Stevenson Macadam :° 

JSTumber grossly contaminated by sewage matter 

and decidedly unwholesome 104 

IS^umber less contaminated and less unwholesome. ... 32 

Number tinged with sewage matter 4 

ISTumber free from all contamination 

Total examined 140 

lY. The general intelligence of the laborer is a factor 
of his industrial efficiency. This proposition is too well 
established and too familiar to need extended illustration. 
The intelligent laborer is more useful not merely because 
he knows how to apply' his bodily force in his work with 
the greatest effect, but also because 

(a) He requires a shorter apprenticeship and less techni- 

' How, indeed, do liuman beings live at all under sucli circum- 
stances ? Fresh and vigorous constitutions would go off at a gallop in 
some form of active disease, under such ever-present infection. The 
only reason why the very miserable live under it is because they have 
taken on a lower type of being, which is compatible with existence in 
such surroundings but altogether incompatible with great exertions. 
" Their freedom from specific evil is only evidence that they have sub- 
sided into a coarser and lower nature. The florid, strong-pulsed man, 
fresh from a wholesome country dwelling, would die right off when 
subjected to the deficient sanitary conditions which are innocuous to the 
lower physical development of the very poor vegetating in the pur 
lieus of large towns or in mud-built country cottages." — Charles Lam 
port, Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1870, p. 532. 

« Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1867, p. 561. 

' " Le travail suppose 1. I'intelligence qui con^oit et 3. le main qui 
execute." — Batbie. 



66 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

cal instruction. " A recruit," says Prof. Rogers, " wlio 
knows how to read and write can learn his drill in half the 
time in which a totally ignorant person can.'" 

(Z*) He requires far less superintendence. Superintend- 
ence is always costly. If an overseer is required for every 
ten men engaged on a piece of work, the product nnist pay 
for the time and labor, not of ten men but of eleven ; and 
if the overseer obtains, as he most likely will, twice the 
wages of a common laborer, then the product must pay for 
the time and lal)or of twelve. The employer would just 
as soon pay his hands 20 per cent more if he could dispense 
with the overseer. 

{c) He is far less wasteful of material. Even in agri- 
culture no product can be obtained from labc>r without the 
sacrifice of pre-existing wealth. A bushel of wheat must 
be sown for every six or eight bushels to be reaped, and 
with it must be buried large quantities of costly manures. 
But in mechanical industry it often liaj)pens that the value 
of the materials used in a manufacture, being themselves 
the result of antecedent processes, far exceeds the value 
proposed to be added by labor. Thus, in the United States 
in 1870, we find a group of industries employing 101,504 
hands, where the value of the materials was $707,361,378, 
while only $31,734,815 were paid in wages.'' Now, waste is 
inevitable in all handling of material. It is merely a ques- 
tion of more or less ; and in this respect the range between 
ignorant and intelligent labor is very great. By waste is 
not meant alone the total destruction of material, but its 
impairment in any degree so that the finished product 
takes a lower commercial value. So great are the possi- 
bilities of loss from this source that in all the higher branches 
of production unintelligent labor is not regarded as worth 
having at any price however low. 

{d) He can use delicate and intricate machinery. 

' Pol. Econ., p. 117. 

^ Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. Industry and Wealth, 
p. 380. 



INTELLIGENCE IN LABOR. 67 

The cost of repairing and replacing this with ignorant 
labor very soon eats up the profits of production, and not 
unfrequentlj the effect is to practically prohibit the use of 
all but the coarsest tools. " Experienced mechanicians 
assert that, notwithstanding the progress of machinery in 
agriculture, there is probably as much sound practical 
labor-saving invention and machinery unused as there is 
used ; and that it is unused solely in consequence of the 
ignorance and incompetency of the workpeople.'" 

We have some striking testimony on this point from Asia 
and Eastern Europe. Wheeler, in his "Cotton Cultivation," 
states that the women of India were accustomed to earn 
with the native " churka" from three farthings to a little 
over a penny a day, while with the Manchester cotton-gin 
they could have earned with ease three pence and possibly 
four and a half pence.^ And H. B. M. Consul Stuart re- 
ports concerning the laborers of Epirus : " In dealing with 
weights and resistance they use direct physical force / the 
aids of the pulley or windlass are but seldom called in, 
while handbarrows and wheelbarrows are seen only on 
rare occasions. It is a singular fact that during the fifty 
years of British occupation in the Ionian Islands, not a 
single mechanical improvement crossed from Corfu to 
Epirus, if I may except the screw and the buckle, which 
found their way here some few years ago, and are now in 
limited use.'" 

y. Still another reason for the large differences which 
exist in respect to industrial efficiency is found in technical 
education and industrial environment. Perhaps no one of 
the causes already mentioned contributes more to this re- 
sult. Even more, I am disposed to believe, than stock and 
breeding, even more than national diet, do the inherited 
instincts of a people in respect to labor, and their habits and 
methods of work, consciously or unconsciously acquired, 



' Hearn's Plutology, p. 59. '' P. 173. 

^ Eeport on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 775, 



68 THE WA0E8 QUESTION, 

the es2)ritQA\(S. the dominating ideas of the national industry, 
determine the degree of etiiciency which will he reached 
in the production of any country. Ilandiness, aptness, and 
fertility of resource become congenital ; in some commu- 
nities the child is brought into the world half an artisan. 
Then, too, he becomes a better workman simply by reason 
of being accustomed, through the years of his own inability 
to labor, to see tools used with address, and through 
watching the alert movement, the prompt co-operation,' 
the precise manipulation, of bodies of workmen. The 
better part of industrial as of every other kind of educa- 
tion is unconsciously obtained. And when the boy is 
himself apprenticetl to a trade, or sets himself at work, he 
finds all about him a thoro igh and minute organization of 
labor which conduces to the highest production ; he has 
examples on every side to imitate ; if he encounters special 
obstacles, he has only to stop, or hardly even to stop, to see 
some older hand deal with the same ; if he needs help, it is 
already at his elbow ; and, above all, he comes under im- 
]>ulses and incitements to exertion and to the exercise of 
thoughtfulness and ingenuity, which are as powerful and 
unremitting as the impulses and incitements which a re- 
cruit experiences in a crack regiment from the moment he 
dons the miiform. 

Very striking testimony is borne in many official reports 
to the differences in the industrial spirit of the different 
nations. Mr. Edwin Rose testified before the Factory 
Commission to the great superiority of the English laborer 
over his Continental rival in his habits of close and continu- 
ous application; and at a subsequent inquiry Mr. Thomp- 
son, of Clitheroe, spoke from a vast personal observation 

' In a debate in the House of Lords in 1875, Earl Fortescue stated 
that Sir Joseph Whitworth, the eminent manufacturer of arms, had ex- 
pressed the opinion that " a workman who had acquired the habit of 
moving promptly at the word of command was worth on the average 
l.s\ Qd. a week more than a man of equal manual dexterity who had 
not acquired the habit." — The Times. 



INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENT. 69 

of the " enduring, nntiring, savage industry" of the Eng- 
lish workman. " Tlie labor of Alsace," he says, " the 
best and cheapest in France, is dearer than the labor of 
Lancasliire." That was forty ^^ears ago. To-day the 
esprit and the technique of industry on the Continent are 
perhaps advanced somewhat beyond where England was in 
1835 ; but the English are looking back with not a little 
wonder at their own want of force and drive industrially, 
in the time of which Mr. Thompson speaks. Thus we find 
Dr. Bridges and Mr. Holmes, in their report to the Local 
Govermnent Board of 18Y3, writing of the Scotch flax 
district as follows : 

" We were struck by the easy and almost leisurely way 
in which labor was carried on in the spinning-rooms as 
compared with the unremitting application of the Lanca- 
shire operatives. All the spinners had seats provided for 
them, of which a large number availed themselves. The 
number of spindles assigned to each was small, varying from 
50 to 80 ;' and the number of ends breaking was in no 
case such as to necessitate constant movement. Some of 
the women were knitting, and all appeared much at their 
ease. In fact, the work very much resembled the picture 
frequently drawn to us, whether truly or otherwise, of 
Lancashire weaving and spinning as it was 20 or 30 years 
ago. 

]S^ow it is needless to say that some of this heightened 

' The proportion of looms to weavers in England as contrasted with 
the proportion which obtains in Ireland and Scotland is significant in 
the same regard. 

Looms in Cotton Mfr. Weavers. 

England, . . 165,032 . . . 57,555 

Scotland, . . 22,621 . . . 12,114 

Ireland, . , 3,372 . . 1,864 



191,025 71,533 

Nearly three looms to 1 weaver in England ; not quite 2 looms in 
Scotland and Ireland. (Report, p. 16.) 
"" Report, p. 27. 



70 THE WAQE8 QUESTION. 

activity is of bad and not of good. Undoubtedly it involves 
in some degree overwork and tlie undue wear and tear of 
tlie muscular and the nervous system. But by no means 
all, or probably the greater part, comes to this. It is because 
manual dexterity and visual accuracy have been dcvehjped 
to a higli point in one generation and bred into the next 
generation ; because habits of subordination and co-operation 
have become instinctive ; because organization ;iud discipline 
have been brought nearly to perfection, that mechanical 
labor in England is so much more effective than on the Conti- 
nent. Nor is keen, persistent activity necessarily injurious. 
Dawdling and loafing over one's work are not beneficial to 
health. Man was made for lal)or, for energetic, enthusi- 
astic labor, and within certain limits, not narrow ones, in- 
dustry brings rewards sanitary as well as economical. 

I have spoken of the faculty of organization' as account- 
ing for much of the difference in the efficiency of labor 
between England and France, for example. I beg to insist 
on this with reference to the point of the wear and tear 
of the laboring force. Those who are familiar with the 
movements of armies know that a body of troops may be 
marched thirty miles in a day if kept in a steady, e(piable 
motion, with measured periods of rest, and not be brought 
into camp, at night, so tired as another body of troops that 
have come only half the distance, but have been fretted and 
worried, now delayed and now crowded forward, every 



^ The famous Committee of the House of Commons on the Exporta- 
tion of Tools and Machinery dwelt on the " want of arrangement in 
foreign manufactories," as an important reason for the superior cheap- 
ness of production in England. 

In the evidence given before them is found (p. 363) the following 
highly-suggestive remark : " A cotton manufacturer who left INIanches- 
ter seven years ago would be driven out of the market by the men 
who are now living in it, provided his knowledge had not kept pace 
with those who have been during that time constantly profiting by the 
progressive improvements that have taken place in that period. This 
progressive knowledge and experience is our great power and advan- 
tage." 



ORGANIZATION IN INDUSTRT. 71 

portion of the column balked by turns, and kept waiting 
for long periods in that most wearing expectation of instant 
movement. Now, this is not an extreme contrast as regards 
military movements ; nor need any thing be taken from its 
extent when we come to apply it to the operations of in- 
dustry. In an establishment where each person has his 
place and perfectly knows his duty, where work never 
chokes its channels and never runs low, where nothing ever 
comes out wrong end foremost, where there is no fretting 
or chafing, where there are no blunders and no catastrophes, 
where there is no clamor and no fuss, a pace may be main- 
tained which would kill outright the operatives of a noisy, 
ill-disciplined, badly-organized shop. For, as was said in 
opening this subject of the efficiency of labor, there is in 
all industry a positive and a negative element. Waste is 
inseparable from work ; but the proportions in which the 
two shall appear may be made to vary greatly. It is only 
when we see a perfectly-trained operative performing his 
task that we realize how much of what the undisciplined 
and ignorant call their work is merely waste ; how little 
of their expenditure of muscular and nervous force really 
goes to the object ; how much of it is aside from, or in 
opposition to, that object. And the remark apphes not 
alone to the exertions of the individual but, in a still higher 
degree, to the operations of bodies of men. 

" It is not," says Mr. Laing, " the expertness, dispatch, 
and skill of the operative himself that are concerned in the 
prodigious amount of his production in a given time, but 
the laborer who wheels coals to his fire, the girl who makes 
ready his breakfast, the whole population, in short, from 
the pot-boy who brings his beer, to the banker who keeps 
his employer's cash, are in fact working to his hand with 
the same quickness and punctuality that he works with 
himself.'" 

We have some interesting instances in proof that such 



Notes of a Traveller, p. 290. 



73 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

industrial superiority as has been described is not due alone 
to differences of stock and breeding or of general intelli- 
gence, but that strangers placed within the same industrial 
environment, and afforded opportunities of like technical 
education, tend steadily, and it may be rapidly, to advance 
towards the efficiency of the native laborer. Thus Mr. 
Brassey, after dwelling on the advantages >oi carrying out 
English navvies, at vast expense, even to Canada or to 
Queensland, adds significantly : " The superiority of the 
English workmen M^as most conspicuous when they first 
commenced work in a country in which no railways had 
been previously constructed.'"^ 

The Commissioners (1807) on the Employment of Women 
and Children in Agriculture, in their second report,'' 1869, 
give the results of a very considerable experiment in drain- 
ing in Northumberland, extended over a series of years, in 
which laro-e numbers both of En<dish and Irish were em- 
ployed, from which it appears that " whereas the English 
beffinner earns an averao-e of four shilhno-s a week more 
than the Irish beginner, better food and about ten years' 
practice reduce the difference to Is. 4^7." And Mr. 
Chadwick states^ " that agricultural laborers who have 
joined gangs of navA^ies and have been drilled, with them, 
into tlieir energetic piece-work lial)its, on returning to farm 
labor will do their tasks of work in half the time of the 
common day-laborers. Examples," he adds, '^ of the high- 
est order of agricultural piece-work, with increased wages 
closely approaching manufacturing wages, are presented in 
the market-garden culture near the metropolis." 

YI. The last reason which I shall assign for the superior 
efficiency of individual laborers, classes of laboreis, or na- 
tions of laborers, is cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, 
growing out of self-respect and social ambition and the 
laborer's personal interest in the result of his work. 



' Work and Wages, p. 117. "" P. 104. 

* Statistical Journal, xxviii., p. 307. 



INEFFICIENCY OF SLAVE LABOR. 73 

I have spoken of causes which affect the laborer's bone 
and sinew, his physical integrity and his muscular activity. 

1 have spoken also of causes which affect his intellectual 
qualification for his work, the intelligence which shall di- 
rect his bodily powers to the end of production. The 
causes now in view are moral, affecting the will. 

After all, it is in the moral elements of industry that we 
find the most potent cause of differences in efficiency. If 
it constitutes one a sentimentalist to recognize the power of 
sentiment in human action, whether in politics or in econo- 
mics, the writer gladly accepts the appellation. Cheerful- 
ness and hopefulness in the laborer are the spring of exer- 
tions in comparison with which the brute strength of the 
slave or the eye-server is but weakness. 

The inferiority of the labor of the slave' to that of the 
freeman, even of the lowest industrial grade, is proverbial. 
Slave labor is always and everywhere ineffective and waste- 
ful because it has not its reward.^ ]^o matter how com- 
plete the authority of the master over the person and the 
life, he cannot command all the faculties of his slave. The 
slave may be made to work, but he can not be made to 
think ; he may be made to work, but he can not be kept 
from waste ; to work, indeed, but not with eiiergy. En- 
ergy is not to be commanded, it must be called forth by 
hope, ambition, and aspiration. The whip only stimulates 
the flesh on which it is laid. It does not reach the parts 
of the man where lie the springs of action. No brutality 
of rule can evoke even the whole physical power of a hu- 
man being. The man himself, even if he would, can not 

^ Prof. Cairnes, in his able work on " The Slave Power," sums up the 
economical defects of slave labor under three heads : " It is given re- 
luctantly ; it is unskilful ; it is wanting in versatility." (P. 44.) 

* " The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates 
that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their 
maintenance, is, in the end, the dearest of any. A person who can 
acquire no property can have no other interest but to eat as much and 
lo labor as little as possible." — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 390, 
891. 



74 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

render liis own best service unless some passion of the 
higher nature, love, gratitude, or hope, be awakened. The 
nervous force, which is to the muscular what the steam is 
to the parts of the engine, is only in a small degree under 
the control of the conscious will. It is a little fire only 
that fear kindles, and it is a little force only that is gene^ 
rated thereby to move the frame. I speak of fear alone, 
that is, mere fear of evil. When love of life and home 
and friends are present and give meaning to fear, the 
utmost energies may be evoked ; but not by fear alone, 
which is, the rather, paralyzing in its effect. 

Were it not for this impotence of the lash, the nations 
would either not have risen from the once almost universal 
condition of servitude, or would have risen far more slowly. 
The slave has always been able to make it for his master's 
interest to sell him freedom. He could always afford to 
pay more than could be made out of him. This is a well- 
recognized principle, and hence the former slave States of 
the American Union, building their political and social im 
stitutions on slavery as the corner-stone, had to forbid en- 
tirely or to put under serious disabilities the exercise of 
manumission. Even with the little the brutalized black 
could apprehend of the privileges of freedom, even with 
his feeble hopes and aspirations, condemned, as he knew, 
by his color to perpetual exclusion, he could always buy 
himself if permitted. This unprofitableness of slave or 
bond labor' has prepared the way for those great changes, 
geneially, it is true, effected inmiediately under the pressure 
of political necessities,'^ which have transformed whole pop- 
ulations of slaves or serfs into nations of freemen. 



^ Mr. TiirnbuU, in his work on Austria, says : " A large Bohemian 
proprietor, who with his brothers counted on their estates 18,000 sub- 
jects, has frequently observed to me that he found it usually more 
advantageous to accept even a very small part of the legal commuta- 
tion-money, and to hire labor from others, than to take it in kind from 
those who were bound to yield it." 

^ Instance the action of the nobles of Hungary, at the outbreak of 



HOPEFULNESS IN LABOR. 75 

But great as is the superiority, arising from this cause 
alone, of free over serf or slave labor, the difference is yet 
not so great as exists between grades of free labor, as cheer- 
fulness and hopefulness in labor, due to self-respect and 
social ambition, are found, in greater or in less degree, 
animating classes and communities of laborers. 

It is in the proprietor of land under equal laws that we 
find the moral qualities which are the incentive of industry 
most highly developed. Arthur Young's saying has be- 
come proverbial : " Give a man the secure possession of a 
bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden ;'" as also 
his other saying, " The magic of property turns sand into 
gold.'" The energy which fear and jiain can not command, 
joy and hope call forth in its utmost possibilities. The 
man not only will, he can. The waste of muscular force 
is perhaps not half as great in toil which is taken up freely 
and gladly. IS^ervous exhaustion comes late and comes 
slowly when the laborer sees his reward manifestly grow- 
ing before his eyes. 

It is the fulness and the directness of this relation of 
labor to its reward which, without bell or whip, drives the 
peasant proprietor afield, and, 

"From the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb," 

the revolntion of 1848, in transmuting the urbarial tenure of lands into 
unrestricted tenure by freehold. " By this great and voluntary con- 
cession," says Alison, " the property of 500,000 families, consisting of 
little estates from 30 to GO acres each, and comprehending nearly half 
a kingdom, was at once converted from a feudal tenure, burdened with 
numerous duties, into absolute property." — History of Europe, xxii. 
612. 

^ " An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties 
before it, and has clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a 
disgrace to common-sense to ask the cause : the enjoyment of proper- 
ty must have done it. Give a man the secure possession of a bleak 
rock, and he will turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years 
lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert. " — Travels iij 
France, Pinkerton, iv. 122. 

"^ How the magic of property turns sand into mold, a truer source of 
wealth than placers or auriferous quartz, has been shown in the mari- 
time districts of Belgium. 



76 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

employs his every energy, directed by all his intelligence, 
towcards the niaxininin of production with tlie mininiimi of 
loss and waste. Thus it is that Mr. Inglis describes the 
peasantry of Zurich : 

" When I used to open my casement, between four and 
five in the morning, to look out upon the lake and the dis- 
tant Alps, I saw the laborer in the fields ; and when I re- 
turned from an evening walk, long after sunset, as late 
perhaps as half past eight, there was the laborer, mowing 
his grass or tying up his vines." 

" No men in the world," says Prof. Hearn, " exhibit a 
greater degree of habitual energy than the Scottish subjects 
of Queen Victoria ; yet when her great-grandfather was 
heir to the throne, the Scottish people were conspicuous 
for their incorrigible indolence. The lazy Scotch Avere in 
the last century as notorious as the lazy Irish' of a later day. 
In both countries a like eifect was produced by a like 
cause.'" 

When Ave turn from the proprietor of land to the hired 
laborer, we note at once a loss of energy. In the constitu- 
tion of things it can not be otherwise. When the relation 
of labor to its reward becomes indirect and contingent, 
and the workman finds that the difference, to himself, of 
very faithful or but little faithful service is only to be ex- 
perienced in a remote and roundabout way, according as 
the master's future ability to employ him may be in a de- 
gree affected thereby, his own present wages being fixed 
by contract, and secure upon compliance with the formal 
requirements of service ; or according as his own reputa- 
tion for efficiency or inefficiency may lead to his being 
longer retained or earlier discharged, in the event of a fu- 
ture reduction of force — I say, when the relation of labor 

' Arthur Young in 1777 described the Irish as " lazy to an excess at 
work, but spiritedly active at play" (Pinkerton, iii. 872.) When the 
Irishman has a fair chance under equal laws, he imports all this ac- 
tivity into his work. 

' Plutology, p. 41. 



FAITHFULNESS m WAGE LABOR. 77 

to its reward becomes thus indirect and contingent, tlie 
workman not only will not, lie can not, being man, labor as 
lie would labor for himself. Even without the least wilful 
intention to shirk exertion or responsibility, there will be, 
there must be, a falling oif in energy and in carefulness : a 
falling oif which will make a vast diiference in production 
long before it is sufficiently a subject of consciousness on 
the part of the laborer Inraself to become " eye-service," or 
of observation on the part of the employer to lead to com- 
plaint. 

But the loss of energy and carefulness due to the making 
distant or doubtful the reward of extra exertion on the 
part of the workman, will be much greater with some than 
with others under precisely similar conditions, and will vary 
greatly, also, as conditions vary. Whether it be superiority 
in faith, in conscience, or in imagination, ^ that makes the 
diiference, there are those who can work in another's 
cause almost as zealously and prudently as if it were in 
their own. Such men more clearly apprehend, however 
they come to do it, the indirect and remote rewards of zeal 
and fidelity, or, apprehending these no more strongly than 
others, they are yet better able to direct their energies to 
an end, and control and keep under the appetites and im- 
pulses which make against a settled purpose. Some men, 
some races of men, are easily recognized as more genuine, 
honest, and heroic than others, and these differences in 
manly quality come out nowhere more conspicuously than 
in the degrees of interest and zeal exhibited in hired labor. 



I have not chosen to introduce into the body of the fore- 
going discussion the effects of drunkenness and dishonesty 



* I will guard myself against a critic's sneer at the introduction of 
this word into a treatise on wages by citing Mr. Mill's remark, " It is 
very shallow, even in pure economics, to take no account of the influ- 
ence of imagination," - Pol, Econ., i. 392, 393. 



78 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

in reduciiii^ the efficiency of labor. Tliroughoiit all tliat 
has been said the laborer has been assnnied to be temper- 
ate and well-intentioned. Of the frightful waste of pro- 
ductive power, through both the diminution of work and 
the increase of waste, which results from the vice of 
drunkenness, so lamentably characterizing certain races, it 
can not be necessary to speak. More than all tlie festivals 
of the Greek or the Roman church, the worship of " Saint 
Monday'" reduces the current wages of labor, while lea viug 
its ineffaceable marks on heart and l)rain and hand. The 
want of counnon honesty between man and man, though 
happily less frequent than the indulgence of vicious appe- 
tites, works even deeper injiny to industry where it pre- 
vails in any considerable degree. " A breach of trust 
among the stoneworkers of Septmoncel," says Lord Bra- 
bazon, in his report of 1872 on the condition of the indus- 
trial classes of France, " would be sufficient to cause the 
banishment of this rich industry from the mountains of the 
Jura to the workshops of Paris and Amsterdam ;'" and the 
same judicious reporter states that the abstraction of the 
silk given to the Lyons workmen to manufacture " has 
always weighed heavily on the trade of that city." " To 
meet this," says M. Beaulieu, in his Populations Ouvri^res, 
" the manufacturer has but one resource, the diminution 
of the rate of wages. Either the factory or workshop 
must be closed or wages nmst be lowered. There is no 
middle course, and in either case tlie workman is the 
sufferer." It need not be said that the illicit gains thus 
obtained — sold as the plunder is surreptitiously, under 
penalty of the galleys — have afforded a very inadequate 



' " Almost invariably an unemployed c'ay in Belgium." (Report of 
Mr. Consul Grattan on the condition of the industrial classes, 1872, 
p. 19.) Much the same story comes from Norway and Sweden, Eng- 
land and Scotland, whose inhabitants we reckon among the noblest 
peoples of the world. 

^ P. G7. 



WAGES THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY. 79 

compensation to the workmen for the loss which their dis- 
honesty inflicted njDon the trade. 

I can not better close this extended discussion of the canses 
which contribute to the efliciencv of labor than by intro- 
ducing two extracts, the first from Dr. Kane's work on the 
Industrial Resources of Ireland, in which he accounts very 
justly for the difference between the Irish and the English 
laborer of that period ; the second from Adam Smith's 
Wealth of I^ations. Both are profoundly significant, and 
I ask the reader's careful consideration of them with refe- 
rence to the principles previously discussed, and also with 
reference to the doctrine of the wages fund, to be treated 
hereafter. 

" A wretched man," says Dr. Kane, " who can earn by 
his exertion but four or five shillings a week, on which to 
support his family and pay the rent of a sort of habitation, 
must be so ill-fed and depressed in mind that to work as 
a man should work is beyond his power. Hence there are 
often seen about employments in this country a number of 
hands double what would be required to do the same work 
in the same time with British laborers. • • • When 1 
say that the men thus employed at low wages do so much 
less real work, I do not mean that they intentionally idle, 
or that they reflect that as they receive so little they should 
give little value ; on the contrary, they do their best honestly 
to earn their wages ; but, supplied only with the lowest de- 
scriptions of food, and perhaps in insufficient quantity, 
they have not the physical ability for labor, and being with- 
out any direct prospect of advancement, they are not ex- 
cited by that laudable ambition to any display of superior 
energy. If the same men are placed in circumstances 
where a field for increased exertion is opened to them, and 
they are made to understand, what at first they are rather 
incredulous about, that they will receive the full value of 
any increased labor they perform, they become new beings, 
the work they execute rises to the highest standard, and 
they earn as much money as the laborers of any other 



80 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

country. Wages are no longer low., hiot labor is not on that 
accou.it any dearer than it has heen before.''''^ 

" The liberal reward of labor," says Adam Smith,^ " as it 
encouniges the propagation, so it encourages the industry, of 
the common people. Th,e iDages of labor are the encourage- 
ment of industry., which, like every other human quality, 
improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. 
A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of tlie 
laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition 
and ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty animates 
him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages 
are high, accordingly, we sliall always find the workmen 
more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are 
low : in England, for example, than in Scotland ; in the 
neighborhood of great towns than in remote country places." 



' Pp. 397, 398. ^ Wealth of Nations, i. 



CHAPTEK TV. 

THE DEGEADATION OF LAEOK. 

I USE the term, degradation of labor, here in the sense 
of the reduction of the laborer from a higher to a lower 
industrial grade. 

The constant imminence of this change, the smallness of 
the causes, often accidental in origin and temporary in du- 
ration, which may produce it, and the almost irreparable 
consequences of such a catastrophe, are not sufficiently at- 
tended to in discussions of wages. To the contrary, it is 
the seK-protecting power of labor which is dwelt upon. It 
is shown how, if by any insidious cause, or from any sud- 
den disaster in trade or production, be the same local or 
general, industry is impaired and employment diminished, 
labor immediately sets itself, by natural laws, to right itself, 
by withholding increase of population, or by migrating 
to more fortunate localities. 

The same, if labor be crowded down by the power of 
capital, or by unjust laws : through economical harmonies 
which have excited the admiring gratitude of many writers, 
the vindication of the laboring class is effected automati- 
cally and peacefully, without revolution and without ma- 
chinery. The excessive profits which the employing class 
are thus enabled for a time to make, increase the capital of 
the community, and thus give enhanced employment to 
laborers, so that, in the end, it is quite as well as if the 
money had gone in wages instead of profits. Thus Prof. 
Perry says : " If capital gets a relatively too large reward, 



83 THE WAGES QUESTIOIT. 

nothing can interrupt the tendency that labor sliall get, in 
consequence of that, a larger reward the next time. ... If 
capital takes an undue advantage of labor at any point, as 
unfortunately it sometimes does, somebody at some other 
point has, in consequence of that, a stronger desire to em- 
ploy laborers, and so the wrong tends to right itself. This 
is the great conservative force in the relations of capital to 
labor.'" 

]^ow, of the degrees of celerity and certainty with which 
jDopulation does, in fact, adapt itself to changes in the seats 
or in the forms of industry, or assert itself against the en- 
croachments of the employing class or the outrages of leg- 
islation, I shall have occasion to speak with some fulness 
hereafter (Chapter XI.). But I desire at the present time, 
in close connection with our discussion of the causes which 
contribute to the efficiency of labor, to point out the conse- 
quences of any failure or undue delay on the part of popu- 
lation in thus resenting the loss of employment or the re- 
duction of wages. 

Tiie trouble is, these changes which are to set labor 
right always require time, and often a very long time. 
There is danger, great danger, that meanwhile men will 
simply drop down in the industrial and social scale, accept 
their lot, and adapt themselves to the newly-imposed con- 
ditions of life and labor.'* If this most melancholy result 



' The Financier, August 1, 1874. 

^ " There is considerable evidence that the circumstances of the agri- 
cultural laborers in England have more than once in our history sus- 
tained great permanent deterioration from causes which operated by 
diminishing tlie demand for labor, and which, if population had exer- 
cised its power of self -adjustment in oliedience to the previous standard 
of comfort, could only have had a temporary effect ; but, unhappily, the 
poverty in which the class was plunged during a long series of years 
brought that previous standard into disuse, and the next generation, 
growing up without Laving possessed those pristine comforts, multi- 
plied in turn without any attempt to retrieve them." — J. S. Mill, Pol. 
Econ., i. 41. 

Mr. Mill here explains the whole permanent effect upon the grounds 



THE DEGRADATION' OF LABOR. 83 

take? place, then, it should be observed, the restorative 
changes tohich have heen spoken of need not he effected at 
all. All things settle to the new level ; industrial society 
goes on as before, except that there is a lower class of 
citizens and a lower class of laborers. There is thereafter 
no virtue at all, no tendency even, in strictly industrial 
forces or relations to make good that great loss. In a 
word, much of the reasoning of the schools and the books 
on this subject assumes that the laboring class will resent 
an industrial injury, and will either actively seek to right 
themselves, or will at least abide in their place without sur- 
render until the economical harmonies have time to bring 
about their retribution. But the human fact (so often to 
be distinguished from the economical assumption) is, there 
is a fatal facility in submitting to industrial injuries which 
too often does not allow time for the operation of these 
beneficent principles of relief and restoration. The in- 
dustrial opportunity comes around again, it may be, but it 
does not find the same man it left : he is no longer capable 
of rendering the same service ; the wages he now receives 
are perhaps quite as much as he earns. 

Let us take successively the cases of a reduction of wages 
and of a failure of employment. Let it be supposed that 
a combination of employers seeking their own immediate 
interests, that is, to get labor as cheaply as possible, per- 
haps under some pressure brought on them by the state of 
the market, succeeds in effecting a reduction of the wages 
of common labor, in a given community, from $1 to 75 cents 
per day. If the $1 previously received has allowed comforts 
and luxuries and left a margin for saving, and especiallv if 
intelligence and social ambition prevail in the community, 



of Maltlius, overlooking the equally important considei-alion tl)afc, 
■without respect to the numbers of the laboring class, the efficiency of 
labor must have been seriously impaired by inadequate food and 
clothing, unhealthy dwellings, and, more than all, by the loss of hope- 
fulness, cheerfulness, and self-respect. 



84 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

this reduction will probably be resented in the sense that 
population will bo reduced by migration or by absti- 
nence from propagation until the former wages are, if 
possible, restored. But if the previous wages have been 
barely enough to furnish the necessaries of life, with no 
margin for saving, and especially if the body of laborers 
are ignorant and unambitious, the probabilities are quite 
the otlier way. The falling off in the quantity or (piality 
of food and clothing, and in the convenience and healthf iih 
ness of the shelter enjoyed, will at once affect the efficiency 
of the laborer. With less food, which is the fuel of the 
human machine, less force will be generated ; with less 
clothing, more force will be wasted by cold ; with scantier 
and meaner quarters, a fouler air and diminished access to 
the light will prevent the food from being duly digested 
in the stomach, and the blood from being duly oxydized in 
the lungs ; will lower the tone of the system, and expose 
the subject increasingly to the ravages of disease. Now, 
in all these ways the laborer becomes less efficient simply 
through the reduction of his wages. The current economy 
asserts that whatever is taken off from wages is added to 
profits, and that hence a reduction of wages will increase 
capital and hence quicken employment, and hence, in turn, 
heighten wages. But Ave have seen it to be quite possible 
that what is taken from wages no man shall gain. It is 
lost to the laborei' and to the world. Now, so far as sti'ictly 
economic forces are concerned, where enters the restorative 
principle ? The employer is not getting excessive jJi'ofits, 
to be expended subsequently in wages. The laborer is not 
nnderj^aid : he earns what he gets now no better than he 
formerly did his larger wages. 

This image of the degraded laborer is not a fanciful one 
There are in England great bodies of population, com- 
munities counting scores of thousands, which have come, in 
just this way, to be pauperized and brutalized ; the inhabi- 
tants weakened and diseased by underfeeding and foul air 
until, in the second generation, blindness, lameness, and 



THE FATE OF SPITALFIELDS. 85 

scrofula become abnormally prevalent ; hopeless and lost 
to all self-respect so that they can scarcely be said to de- 
sire a better condition, for they know no better ; and still 
bringing children into the world to fill their miserable 
places in garrets and cellars, and, in time, in the wards of 
the workhouse. 

Such a region is Spitalfields, where a large popula- 
tion, once reasonably prosperous and self-respectful, was 
ruined by a great change in the conditions of the silk 
manufacture. The severity of the industrial blows dealt 
them in quick succession was so great that the restorative 
principles never began to operate at all. Spitalfields suc- 
cumbed to its fate. Instead of it being true that the misery 
of the weavers was a reason to them to emigrate, it consti- 
tuted the very reason why they could not emigrate, or 
would not. Instead of it being true that their misery was 
a reason to them not to propagate, the more miserable they 
became, the more reckless, also, and the heavier grew their 
burdens. As a consequence, in a single human generation 
the inhabitants of Spitalfields took on a type suited to their 
condition. Short-lived at best, weakness, decrepitude, and 
deformity made their labor, while they lasted, ineffective 
and wasteful. So long ago as 1842 the Poor-Law Com- 
missioners reported that it was almost a thing unknown 
that a candidate from this district for appointment in the 
police was found to possess the requisite physical qualifi- 
cations for the force. 1 " You could not," says another 
witness, " raise a grenadier company among them all." 
Yet it is recorded that the Spitalfields volunteers during 
the French wars were "good-looking bodies of men." 

But if this loss may be suffered in respect to the physical 
powers of the laborer through a reduction of wages, quite 
as certainly and quite as quickly may his usefulness be im- 
paired through the moral effects of- such a calamity. And 
just as the greatest possibilities of industrial efficiency lie 

' Report, p. 203. 



86 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

in the creation of hopefulness, self-respect, and social am- 
bition among the laboring class, so the chief possibilities of 
loss lie in the discouragement or the destruction of these 
qualities. We have seen through what a scale the laborer 
may rise in his pi-ogress to productive power ; by looking 
back we may see through what spaces it is always possible 
he may fall under the force of purely industrial disasters. 
" The wages of labor," says Adam Smith, " are the en- 
couragement of industry, which, like every other human 
quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it 
receives." If this be true, every reduction of wages must, 
in some degree, diminish tlie efficiency of labor. But 
it is when the reduction begins to affect tlie power of 
the workman to maintain himself according to the standard 
of decency which he has set for himself that the decline 
in industrial (piality goes on most rapidly. The fact that 
he is driven to squalid conditions does not merely lower 
his physical tone : alm')st inevitably it impairs his sense of 
self-respect and social ambition, that sense which it is so 
difficult to awaken, so fatally easy to destroy. Especially 
as the pincliing of want forces his family into quartei's 
where cleanliness and a decent privacy become impossible 
does the degradation of labor proceed with fearful rapidity.' 
Ambition soon fails the laborer utterly ; self-res]3ect disap- 
pears amid the beastly surroundings of his life ; the spring 
of effort is broken ; it may be he becomes dissipated and 
irregular, and his employer can not afford his beggarly pit- 

* " Modesty must be an unknown virtue ; decency, an unimaginable 
tiling, where in one small chamber, with the beds lying as thickly as 
they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads, grown and grow- 
ing-up girls are herded promiscuously ; where every operation of the toi- 
let and of nature — dressings, undressings, births, deaths — is performed 
within the sight and hearing of all ; where children of both sexes to as 
high an age as 12 or 14, or even more, occupy the same bed ; where 
the whole atmosphere is sensual, and human nature is degraded into 
something below the level of the swine. It is a hideous picture ; and 
the picture is drawn from life." — Appendix to the First Report of the 
Poor-Law Commissioners, p. 34, 



mDTISTBIAL INJURIES REMAIN. 87 

tance now so well as formerly the wages of his hopeful 
labor. 

All such effects tend to remain and perpetuate them- 
selves. When people are down, economical forces solely 
are more likely to keep them down, or push them lower 
down, than to raise them up. It is only on the assumption 
that labor will resent industrial injuries, either by seeking 
a better market or by abstaining from reproduction, that 
it can be asserted that economical laws have a tendency to 
protect the laboring class and secure their interests. Just 
so far as laborers abide in their lot, and bring forth after 
their kind, while suffering industrial hardship, no matter 
how in the first place incurred, the whole effect and ten- 
dency of purely economical forces is to perpetuate, and not 
to remove, that hardship, either in the next year or in the 
next generation. Moral and intellectual causes only can 
repair any portion of the loss and waste occasioned. 

If such are the unfortunate liabilities of a violent reduc- 
tion of wages, it will of course appear, without any extended 
illustration, that the effects of a protracted failure of employ- 
ment must be even more injurious to the efficiency of labor 
where the margin of life is at the best narrow and no accu- 
mulation of savings has been effected. All the hardships 
of the conditions described are here aggravated to an intol- 
erable degree, and it is more than is to be expected of hu- 
man nature if despondency and despair do not drive the 
unhappy laborer to the dram-shop ^ to drown his sorrows 
and his fears in indulgences which will leave him worse in 
character and weaker in nerve and sinew. However in- 
dustry may revive, the shattered industrial manhood can 
never be fully restored. 

But perhaps even more than in the miserable resort to 
the dram-shop, the fatal effects of a cessation of employ- 



^"C'est surtout pendant les epoques de chomages que I'ouvrier, ne 
sachant comment employer ses lieures, hante le cabaret." — Rapport 
(M. Ducarre) Salaires et rapports entre ouvriers et patrons, p. 269. 



88 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ment upon the industrial quality are seen in the readiness 
with which, when once lie has had experience of public 
support, the laborer takes refuge in charity, E-arely is char- 
acter found robust enough to throw off this taint. Let a nvMi 
once be brought to that painful and most humiliating ne- 
cessity, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that ever after 
he must be counted as industrially dead. Where tirst he 
was driven, as to the bitterness of death, only by extremity 
of suffering, oidy after desperate efforts and long endur- 
ance, he now resorts with a fatal facility on the lirst sug- 
gestion of want. Known to his comrades as having re- 
ceived relief, his children bearing the pauper-brand among 
their playmates, all ingenuous sensibility soon disappears. 
" We can not," says Mr. McCullagh Torrens, in his work 
" The Lancashire Lesson," dealing with the experiences of 
England during the Cotton Famine incident to our war — 
" we cannot help marking the readiness with which, on the 
lirst cessation of adequate wages, large numbers of persons 
now resort to rates and subscription funds, many of whom 
three years ago would have shrunk instinctively from sucli 
public avowal of indigence." This is the despair of indus- 
try. The pauper lies below the slave in the industrial 
scale. No lower depth opens downward from this. 

My object, I repeat, in treating here this topic of " the 
degradation of labor" is to point out the constantly immi- 
nent danger that bodies of laborers will not soon enough 
or amply enough resent industrial injuries which may be 
wrought by the concerted action of employers, or by slow 
and gradual changes in production, or by catastroj^hes in 
business, such as commercial panics ; and upon this, and 
in immediate connection with the discussion of the causes 
which contribute to the efficiency of labor, to show the self- 
pei-petuating nature of such industrial injuries under the 
operation of the very economical pi-inciples which, with 
alert and mobile labor intelligently seeking its interests, 
would secure relief and restoration. 



CHAPTER Y, 

THE LA.W OF DIMINISHING KETURNS. 

We have now reached a point where we must consider 
the principles wliich govern tlie relations of population to 
subsistence. 

Why should not j)opulation multiply indefinitely and 
still find, at each stage of increase, food ample for all ? 
J^aj^, with the power there is in mutual help, and with the 
wonderful mechanical advantages which result from the 
subdivision of industry and the multiplication of occupa- 
tions, why should not the share of each be continually aug- 
menting as the number of laborers capable of rendering 
such mutual services and miiting in industrial entei'prises, 
increases ? 

The answer to these questions is found in the Law of 
Diminishing Returns in Agriculture. Up to a certain 
point, the increase of laborers increases the product not 
only absolutely but relatively ; that is, not only is more pro- 
duced in the aggregate, but the product is larger for each 
laborer. Two men working over a square mile of arable 
land will not only merely produce twice as much as one man : 
they will produce more than twice, perhaps three times 
as much. This is because the two can take hold together 
of work to which the strength of either alone would be in- 
adequate, or which requires that one person shall be in one 
place, and another at the same time in another place, in 
order that the two may act simultaneously, as, for example, 
cue driving oxen and the otlier holding the plough. 



90 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Moreover, where the two are not working together, in the 
nsual acceptation of that term, they may yet help each other 
greatly by agreeing to divide their tasks. Each, confining 
himself to a certain part, will become, for that reason, more 
apt and dexterous, will learn to avoid mistakes and save 
waste, and will acquire a facility in production which would 
be impossible were he to undertake a wider and more 
varied line of duties. 

For a similar reason, three men will not merely produce 
three times as much as one : they will probably produce 
four times, perhaps five times, as much. A minuter sub- 
division of industry will become possible, and a more 
effective assistance in those parts of the work which require 
the actual co-operation of the different members. 

Much in the same way is it with the application of capital 
to land. Let four men be working upon a square mile of 
arable land, having the use of a capital to the value of $25, 
comprising rude spades, axes, and hoes. Kow, double that 
capital, allowing an improvement in the quality of the tools 
or an Increase in the quantity as may be desired. There 
will be, if that additional capital have been judiciously 
used, an increase of product over the product of the same 
men when employing the smaller capital, which increase 
we will call A. If Ave place in the hands of these men an- 
other $25 of capital, in forms appropriate to their wants, 
making $75 capital in all, we shall have another incre- 
ment of product ; but it will not be A only, but A plus 
something. And if. again, we give them an additional 
capital of $T5, making $150 in all, including now a horse, 
a plough, and a cart, the addition made thereby to their 
product will not be 3A merely : it may be 5A ; it may 
be lOA ; it may be 20A. 

This process of increasing the labor and capital to be 
applied to a square mile of arable land might, as we need 
not take space to show, be continued to a very consider- 
able extent ; and all the while it would remain true that 
the product was increased more than proportionally, so 



INCREASING RETURNS. 91 

that a continually larger share conld be assigned to each 
individual laborer, and to each dollar of capital. The 
two principal causes for such increase of product, if we con- 
fine our attention to the increase in the number of laborers 
— as, for simplicity's sake, we shall hereafter do — are 
those already indicated, namely : 1st, the ability of men actu- 
ally working togetlier to do things to which any one of them 
would be singly incompetent, or would do slowly, painfully, 
and imperfectly; and 2d, the advantages which men 
acquire by dividing their tasks, so that each may confine 
himself to a single line of duties, and acquire a higher de- 
gree of efiiciency therein. 

But now appears a new opportunity for at once employ- 
ing more laborers on our square-mile tract, and increasing 
the remuneration of each. Let us suppose there are 12 
laborers, and that the increase of capital has been such as 
to give them a sufiiciency of the ordinary tools used in 
agriculture at the time. Let us also suppose that out of 
their previous production they have been able to save a 
considerable store of provisions and other necessaries of 
life, all included under the generic name capital. They 
have also bred livestock till they have a pretty full supply 
of working animals. 

ITp to this time they have been cultivating only certain 
portions of the tract to which we have assigned them. 
They could not cultivate the whole successfully with so 
few hands, and they have accordingly made selection of 
those parts which were best suited to their immediate pur- 
poses.' A skilled agriculturist walking over the tract, kick- 
ing a clod now and then on the cultivated parts with his 
toe, and breaking a hole with his heel, here and there, 
through the natural turf, would say that they had thus far 
made use only of the light, warm, sandy soils which yield 



^ " The principle wlaicli guides the American farmer is to take the 
most paying crop whicli can be grown with the least cost of labor " — 
James Caird's Prairie Farming, p. 31, 



92 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

quick retuiTis on tlie application of little labor, but that 
there were other portions of the tract, as yet wet and cold, 
with a strong, deep soil, Mdiich would some time, with la- 
bor and capital, be nnich better worth cultivating. More- 
over, a portion of the tract is covered with wood, and 
a hundred acres, or so, lie in swamp, useless, and even pesti- 
ferous, to our young community. 

Now, having reached the comparative freedom of life we 
have described, feeling strong in their united labor and 
their accumulated capital,' they resolve to undertake the 
thorough drainage of the swamp ; and with this view 
invite four new laborers from outside to join fortunes with 
tlieui. The draining of the swamp involves a year's labor, 
and requires the community to give up a year's crop, a 
thing which they would have been unable to do at an earlier 
period in their history, but which their accunmlations now 
render possible. The ground thus drained and opened, rich 
with the vegetable deposits of centuries, proves to be by far 
the nu)st producti\'e portion of their land. So far as they 
still work upon the old lands they achieve as large a product 
as before ; so far as they work upon the new land the pro- 
duct is greater ; and consequently (as we are assuming a 
community of land, of labor, and of wealth) the share of 
each is greater in spite of, or indeed by reason of, the in- 
crease in their numbers. 

A few years pass. The store of provisions and other 
necessaries, of implements and of livestock, wliich was 
drawn down very low by the great effort of draining the 
swamp, has now, from the increased productiveness of the 
joint estate, grown to dimensions larger than ever before. 
The community is now, therefore, in a position to under- 
take any improvement wliich, though involving large pre- 

* " In a new country and among poor settlers . . . poor land is a rela- 
tive term. Land is called poor which is not suitable to a poor man, which, 

on mere clearing and burning, will not yield good first crops 

Thus that which is poor land for a poor man may prove rich land to a 
rich man" — Prof. Johnston's Notes ou North America, ii. 116, 117. 



INCREASme BETUBN8. 93 

sent expenditures, promises to be remnnerative in the final 
result. The incentive thus arising from the possession of 
capital joining, as it chances, with the arrival of four new 
laborers who desire to cast in their fortunes with the young 
community, leads to tlie resolution to thoroughly under- 
drain the rich, deep soils which have been lying so long 
cold and wet, on the further side of a sharp, rocky ridge, 
while the thinner but dryer and warmer parts have been 
cultivated for the sake of their quick returns. Another 
harvest is foregone and the year given up to the improve- 
ment, which again brings the stock of provisions and cloth- 
ing very low, and reduces the tools and livestock of the 
community to the smallest dimensions consistent with 
working efficiency ; but the thing is done, and done once 
for all : soils richer and stronger have been opened to til- 
lage, and the community, now consisting of 20 laborers, is 
able to withdraw, in the main, from the lighter, sandy soils, 
and concentrate their energies principally on the site of the 
former swamp, and on the parts last brought under cultiva- 
tion ; and now the product j)tjr man is notably increased, 
while the capabilities of the soil are so liberal that the 
land responds to every increase of capital with constantly- 
increasing retm^ns. 

It will not be necessary to recite the cutting down of the 
timber, the clearing up of the ground, and the opening of 
what is, after all, the best land of the whole tract. Suffice 
it to say that the poorer lands are now given up entirely, 
and the community, increased by accessions from abroad to 
24 laborers, working on none but those soils which are really 
in the broad view the most productive, obtains a larger ^er- 
capita crop than ever before. 

So far certainly we have not reached a condition of 
" diminishing returns." On the contrary, returns have 
increased with and through the increase of po23ulation. 
But we will now suppose that 24 laborers are as many as 
can be employed to the best advantage on the good lands 
of the tract which we have been considering, and that if 



94 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

25 laborers were to be engaged the product would be more 
than with 24 — for that is a matter of course — but not -^^ as 
much more, so that, with community of labor and of 
wealth, each of the 25 must fain be content with a little 
less than each of the 24 liad received ; and, in the same 
way, were still another laborer to appear, the 20 would pro- 
duce more than the 25 had done, to be sure, but not ^ more, 
so that each of the 26 would receive less even than each of 
the 25 had done. This would be a condition of "diminish- 
ing returns ;" and this condition is liable to be reached in 
the course of the settlement of any region.* 

A¥e will suppose our community to become aware of 
this condition, and thereon to resolve that no further acces- 
sions from alu'oad shall be received ; but in the very act of 
so resolving, one of the nnnd)er discovers the principle of 
the rotation of crops. Heretofore they had been accus- 
tomed to leave every year a portion of their choicest lands 
unsown, having learned that this was essential to keeping 
the soil in its highest productive power. Thus they not 
only lost the advantage of cultivating these choicest por- 
tions of their domain, but, as tliey found it necessary to 
plough the fallow in order to keep down the weeds, they 
had to lay out a part of their laboring-power each year with- 
out any result in the crop of the year. But the discovery 
of the principle of rotation changed all this. The dis- 



' Prof. Cairnes's answer to those who deny the diminishing produc- 
tiveness of land is absolutely conclusive. " If any one denies the fact, 
it is open to him to refute it by making the experiment. Let him 
show that he can obtain from a limited area of soil any required 
quantity of produce by simply increasing the outlay — that is to say, that 
by quadrupling or decupling the outlay, he can obtain a quadruple or 
decuple return. If it be asked why those who maintain the affirma- 
tive of the doctrine do not establish their views by actual experiment, 
the answer is that the experiment is performed for tJiem hy every prac- 
tical farmer ; and that the fact of the diminishing productiveness of 
the soil is proved by their conduct in preferring to resort to inferior 
soils rather than force unprofitably soils of better quality." — Logical 
Method, etc. , p. 35. 



INCREASING RETURNS. 95 

coveiy, in a word, was that the soil, like a man or a horse, 
may rest from one kind of work while doing another ; that 
to the soil the raising of two different crops is the doing 
of two different kinds of work : that crop A draws from the 
soil properties a ; crop B, properties 5 ; crop 0, properties 
G ; and that consequently the soil may be recuperating as 
to properties a and 5, while bearing crop C quite, or nearly, 
as well as if it were doing nothing. 

ITow, this discovery of the principle occurred, we will 
suppose, just in time to prevent the disappointment of 12 
worthy laborers who had come a great distance, hoping to 
join themselves with our community, but were on the 
point of being turned away on the ground that with 36 
laborers, under the existing system of fallows, the commu- 
nity Avould be obliged to return to some of the less produc- 
tive lands which had been abandoned. "With rotation, 
however, this objection no longer exists. The 12 new- 
comers are received, and inasmuch as the laborers in the 
fields are now relatively more concentrated, not having to 
go out to work, or to haul the produce over fallow spaces, 
and inasmuch, too, as the increase in numbers allows a 
much higher degree of co-operation and a minuter subdivi- 
sion of industry (always a prolific source of mechanical ad- 
vantage), while yet all are working on the better lands, the 
product is found to be not one half larger only, but even 
more, so that each of the 36 receives more than each of the 
24 had done. 

It will not be necessary to take our reader's time to relate 
how the simple suggestion that muck might be taken from 
the bed of the old swamp and spread on other portions, led 
to the employment of four additional laborers from abroad ; 
or how the invention' of a new plough which turned up 
the earth from 18 inches depth instead of 8, as by the 
ploughs previously in use, allowed the number of laborers 



^ Be it remembered that in our community there are neither rents 
nor royalties. 



96 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

to rise, one by one, to 48, not only with no diminution of 
the average product, but with its positive increase. 

Now, the above ilhistrations have not exhausted the num- 
ber or exaggerated the scope and effect of advantages in the 
resort from inferior to better soils, in the accomplishment 
of permanent improvements, in the invention of tools and 
implements, in the discovery of new resources, and in 
the utilization of waste, which may enal)le the number of 
laliorers in any given country to increase from year to year 
without the part of each being diminished.' 

But without trying further my reader's patience, I will 
assume that, in the case taken, all known means of increas- 
ing the product proportionally, or more than proportionally, 
to the increase of the number of laborers, have been tried 
and exhausted, and that with 48 laborers to the square- 
mile tract the condition of " diminishing returns " has 
been reached, so that any increase of laborers beyond that 
point will result in a diminisiied per-capita product. In 
such a condition the remark of Mr. J. S. Mill applies : " It 
is in vain to say that all mouths which the increase of man- 
kind calls into existence bring with them hands. The new 
mouths require as much food as the old ones, and the hands 
do not produce as mucli."^ Let it be borne in mind, how- 
ever, that the aggregate product may still, and may even 

' " Tlie soil of England produces eight times as much food as it 
produced 500 years ago." — Rogers, Pol. Econ., p. 181. Of the agriculture 
of the former period, Prof. Rogers says : " In those days half the ara- 
ble land lay in fallow. The amount produced was, to take wheat as 
an example, about eight bushels the acre in ordinary years, i.e., little 
more than a third of an average crop at the jiresent time. There 
were no artificial grasses. Clover was not known, nor any of the 
familiar roots. As a consequence, there was little or no winter feed 
except such coarse hay as could be nuide and spared. Cattle were 
small and stunted by the privations and hard fare of winter. The 
average weight of a good ox was under four cwt. Sheep, too, were 
small, poor, and came very slowly to maturity. The average weight 
of a fleece was not more than two pounds. With ill-fed cattle there 
was little or no strong manure." — Pol. Econ., pjj. 157, 158. 

2 Pol. Econ. i. 230. 



DIMINISHING RETURNS. 97 

indefinitely, be increased by additional labor. England, 
densely populated and bighly cultivated as that country 
is, has not begun to approach the state where additional 
labor will produce no appreciable increase of crops. 
" There are," says Prof. Senior, " about 37,000,000 acres in 
England and Wales. Of these it has Ijeen calculated that 
not 85,000 — less, in fact, than one four-hundredth part — are 
in a state of high cultivation, as hop-grounds, nursery- 
grounds, and fruit and kitchen gardens, and that 5,000,- 
000 are waste.'" Prof. Senior proceeds with this striking 
exposition of the capabilities of production : 

" If the utmost use were made of lime and marl and 
other mineral manures ; if, by a perfect system of drainage 
and in-igation, water were nowhere allowed to be excessive 
or deficient ; if all our wastes were protected by enclosures 
and planting ; if all the land in tillage, instead of being 
scratched by the plough, were deeply and repeatedly 
trenched by manual labor ; if minute care were employed in 
the selecting and planting of every seed and root, and 
watchfulness sufficient to prevent the appearance of a 
weed ; if all livestock, instead of being pastured, had their 
food cut and brought to them ; in short, if the wdiole 
country were subjected to the labor which a rich citizen 
lavishes on his patch of suburban garden ; if it were pos- 
sible that all this should be effected, the agricultural pro- 
duce of the country might be raised to ten times, or indeed 
to much more than ten times, its present amount. . . . 
But although the land in England is capable of producing 
ten times, or more than ten times, as much as it now" pro- 
duces, it is probable that its present produce will never be 
quadrupled, and almost certain that it will never be de- 
cupled." 



It will not have failed to be observed that the law ol 



1 Pol. Econ.,p. 83. 



98 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

diminishing returns does not apply directly to meclianieal 
industry. Yet, inasmuch as the materials of that industry 
are all of an agricultural origin, or at least are all taken 
from the soil, the cost of manufactured products will in- 
evitably be enlianced in consequence. All, however, 
will not rise equally from this cause. Those in Avhich the 
cost of the material is relatively small may for a long time 
decline in price in spite of " diminishing returns ;" those in 
which the cost of the material is relatively large may increase 
steadily in sj)ite of mechanical inventions and improve- 
ments. 

In 1832 Mr. Babbage stated' that pig-lead to the value 
of £1 became worth when manufactured into 

£ 

Sheets or pipes of moderate dimensions 1.25 

White-lead 2. 60 

Ordinary printing characters 4.90 

The smallest type 28.30 

Copper of the value of £1 became worth when manu- 
factured into 

Copper sheeting 1.26 

Household utensils 4.77 

Metallic cloth, 10,000 meshes to the square inch. . . . 52.23 

Bar-iron of the value of £1 became worth when manu- 
factured into 

£ 

Slit iron for nails 1.10 

Natural steel 1.42 

Horseshoes 2.55 

Gun-barrels, ordinary 9.10 

Wood-saws 14.28 

Scissors, best 446.94 

Penknife-blades 657. 14 

Sword-handles, polished steel 972.82 

!N"ow, it is evident that the part of the cost of the nearly 
£1000 of sword-handles, instanced by Mr. Babbage, which 
is affected by the law of diminishing returns, is the few 

* Economy of Manufactures, pp. 163, 164. 



DIMINISHING RETURNS. 99 

shillings' worth of pig-iron originally taken plus the few 
shillings' worth of coal necessary to produce the power 
and the melting and the tempering heat for the successive 
processes of manufacture. With the progress of chemical 
and mechanical discovery, therefore, the cost of the sword- 
handle and the penknife-blade will approach that of tlie 
horseshoe and the nail-iron. The efficiency of hmnan 
labor, again, in the production of wheat may have in- 
creased sixfold since the days of the Odyssey ; the efficiency 
of labor in converting that wheat into bread, as M. 
Chevalier computes it, has been multiplied one hundred 
and forty-four times. The efficiency of labor in producing 
wool may have increased four-fold in this long period, but 
many living men have seen the efficiency of labor in ren- 
dering wool into cloth multiplied fifty- fold. 

So far, then, as human wants can be met by the ela- 
boration of the crude materials furnished by the earth, 
satisfactions (to use the term which Bastiat's writings have 
brought so much into vogue) may be multiplied almost in- 
definitely, not in spite of, but partly in consequence of, 
the increase of population. The mechanic of to-day, if his 
wages yield something over the demands of physical main- 
tenance, may purchase with the balance luxuries, in one 
of a thousand forms, which two hundred years ago would 
have tasked the means of the wealthiest banker. The wife 
of a common laborer may wear fabrics which would once 
have excited the admiration of a court. But, after all, the 
great bulk of the consumption of the working classes must 
be in coarse forms of agricultural produce simply pre- 
pared. It matters little to the laborer that for a few pence 
additional he may have his cotton wrought into exquisite 
designs which a century ago would have required months 
for their elaboration, if the pence he has are not enough 
to buy a sufficient weight of cotton to keep him and his 
children warm. His main concern is with the cost of 
grains and meats, of cotton and wool, of iron and wood ; 
and to these, in their simplest forms, the law of diminish- 

L.ofC. 



100 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ing returns applies with a stringency that never relaxes. 
" If the fact were otherwise . . . the science of political 
economy, as it at present exists, wonld be as completely 
revolutionized as if human nature itself were altered.'" 

' J. E. Cairues, Logical Metliod, etc., p. 36. 



CHAPTER YI. 

MALTHUSIAlSriSM IN "WAGES — THE LAW OF POPULATION. 

To the situation reached at the close of the last chapter 
let us now apply the law of population known by the 
name of the English writer who, if he did not discover the 
principles underlying it, at least called and compelled gen- 
eral attention to them. 

The reader will have noted that in tracing the gradual 
increase in numbers of the agricultural community whose 
experiences formed the subject of the last chapter, the ad- 
ditional laborers for whom room and work were found 
were in all caees called in from abroad, and that these 
laborers were taken as without families, or at least that 
women and children were in no way introduced into the 
narrative. This was because we were then only concerned 
with the industrial capabilities of the square-mile tract 
mider consideration. 

But now let us change the supposition. The addi- 
tion of laborers shall be through the growth to maturity 
of the children of the first residents. All the conditions 
will remain substantially the same, through the whole 
course of settlement and improvement, until we reach 
the stage of "diminishing returns." Here the differ- 
ence between the two modes of accession begins, and 
here Malthusianism applies for the first time. In the 
last chapter our supposition was that when the point 
was reached where the number of laborers was as great 



102 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

as could be employed upon the land to advantage 
— that is, without a reduction of the jyey'-cajpita crop — 
the existing body of laborers would i-efuse to receive 
further accessions, and thus stop at the limit of the highest 
individual product. But how will it be if the accessions 
are by the arrival at maturity of the children of the laborers 
themselves ? Will that mode of increase be checked so 
easily, surely, and, one might say, automatically, when the 
real interests of the laborer demand tliat no more shall be 
admitted to the land now tilled to its highest jper-cajpita 
capability % Mr. Maltlms answers, I*^o ; and his great repu- 
tation rests on his searching investigation of the principles 
of population, and his conclusive statement that population 
has tended, at least mider past human conditions, to disre- 
gard the moral inhibition contained in the fact of diminish- 
int; returns, and to increase thereafter faster than subsist- 
ence, and even to persist in that increase, while food be- 
came more scant, meagi'e, and unnourishing, until at last 
the one sufficient check was applied by disease and famine. 
Population, said Mr. Malthus, increases in a geometrical 
ratio, while subsistence increases in an arithmetical ratio 
only. What, now, is the characteristic of geometrical as 
contrasted with arithmetical increase ? It is that tlie 
increase itself increases. Thus, in a series of seven terms, 
we might have : 

Arithmetical, 2, 4, 0, 8, 10, 12, 14. 
Geometrical, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. 

Here, in the former series, the actual difference between 
the sixth and seventh terms is the same as that between the 
first and second, namely, 2. In the latter series, the 
difference between the first and second terms is also 2, 
while between the sixth and seventh it is 64. This tre- 
mendous leap from term to term is due to the fact that the 
increase between the lirst and second terms becomes itself 
the cause of increase betv/een the second and third terms ; 
and this increase, in turn, becomes the cause of corre* 



TRE LAW OF POPULATION. 



103 



spondmg increase between the third and fourth, and so on 
to the end. Whereas in the arithmetical series we may 
say that the entire increase comes out of the original first 
term, and all the successive increments remain themselves 
barren. 

Mankind, like every other species of animals, said Mr. 
Mai thus, tend to increase in a geometrical ratio. Speaking 
broadly, every human pair, no matter in what term of the 
series appearing, has the same capability of reproduction 
as the original pair, and has the same likelihood of an 
equally numerous offspring, after the same number of gen- 
erations, as Adam and Eve are credited with. It is in this 
fact of a reproductive capability in the descendant equal to 
that of the ancestor that Mr. Maltlius found the possibili- 
ties of perpetual poverty, misery, and vice among tlie human 
race. At this point, however, it needs to be observed that 
the mere fact of children being born to every human pair 
on earth does not of itself meet the conditions of Mr. Mal- 
thus's reasoning. Mr. Greg, in his Social Enigmas, has 
written as if Malthusianism presented the issue whether 
people should liave children or not. But it is plain— almost 
too plain, indeed, to be formally stated— that every human 
pair might have one child, and yet the race become extinct 
in a few generations ; might have two children, yet no in- 
crease of population result, the children only supplying the 
parents' places in tlie social and industrial order ; nay, as a 
large proportion of those who are born do, and seemingly 
must, in the present state of sanitary and medical science, 
die before reaching maturity, and as many who survive do, 
from one cause or another, remain single, every married 
pair might have three children, and yet there be no in- 
crease. Surely these facts dispose of Mr. Greg's sentimen- 
tal grievance. 

The doctrine of Malthus, then, assumes an average 
number of children to a family sufficient, after allowance 
for infant mortality, celibacy, and exceptional sterility, to 
yield a net increase in each generation. As matter of fact; 



104 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Mr. Maltlius' assumes in excess of four children to a family 
as the average under conditions where neither " vice, misery, 
nor moral restraint" appear to check the natm'al progress of 
population. The validity of the theory does not, however, 
depend on the specific ratio taken. Given only a number 
of children suflicient to yield a net increase, however 
slight, in each generation, with an undiminished reproduc- 
tive capability in each married pair, we have the condi- 
tions of a geometrical progression. And the capabilities of 
a geometrical progression when persisted in are simply 
tremendous. " The elephant," says Mr. Darwin, " is 
reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I 
have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum 
rate of natural increase. It will be safest to assume that 
it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on 
breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in 
the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old ; if 
this be so, after a period of from seven hundred and forty 
to seven hundred and fifty years there would be alive 
nearly nineteen million elephants descended from the first 
pair. . . . Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty- 
five years, and at this rate in a few thousand years there 
would literally not be standing-room for his progeny."* 

But how would it be meanwhile with sul)sistence ? In 
saying that this tends to increase in an arithmetical ratio 
only, Mr. Mai thus did not deny an inherent capability in 
vegetable life to reproduce itself far more rapidly than it is 
given to most species of animals to do. " AVheat, we know," 
says Prof. Senior, " is an annual, and its average ]30wer ol 
reproduction perhaps al)Oiit six for one ; on that suj)posi- 
tion, the produce of a single acre might cover the globe in 
fourteen years.2" Here, surely, is geometrical and geogra- 
phical progression with a vengeance ! Why, then, assert 
for vegetable life a power of arithmetical progression only ? 

' The Principle of Population, i. 474-6. 

■■^ The Origin of Species, chai^. iii. " Pol. Econ., p. 30. 



THE LA W OF SUBSISTENCE, 105 

The justification of this will be found in the last words of 
the extract just given : the glorja would he covered,'' and 
that in fourteen years, by the increase of a single acre of this 
comparatively unprolific cereal. There are weeds, and even 
useful plants, whose rate of increase would allow them to 
overspread the earth in half that time. Mr. Malthus's theory 
assumes the earth generally occupied and cultivated, in its 
fertile parts at least. From this point on, all increase of 
vegetable food must be madj against an increasing resist- 
ance, and hence can only be obtained through the expen- 
diture of constantly-increasing force. After the conch- 
tion of " diminishing returns" described in the preceding 
chapter has been reached, every addition to the crop is 
obtained at the cost of more than a proportional amount 
of labor. Thus the share of each laborer becomes smaller 
and still smaller, as, through the persistence^ of the sexual 
instincts, population continues to increase. " The diminish- 
ing productiveness of the land, as compared with the un- 
diminished power of human fecundity, forms the basis of 
the Malthusian theory.'" 



From my own analysis of the doctrine of Mr. Malthus, I 



■" " Througliout the animal and vegetable kingdoms nature lias scat- 
tered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand, 
but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourisliment 
necessary to rear them." — Malthus, The Principle of Population, i. 3. 

" L'accroisement des moyens d'existence et I'accroisement du capital 
ont necessairement des limites dans un espace de temps donne. Au 
contraire, l'accroisement de la population est pour ainsi dire illimite. 
.... Si done, entre ces deux productions extremement inegales, 
la prevoyance humaine ne s'interpose, une calamite est imminente." 
— M. Chevalier, 7eme Discours, d'Overture du cours de I'annee, 1846-7. 

•1 <c rpj^g same power that doubles the population of Kentucky, 
Illinois, and New South Wales every five-and-twenty years, exists 
everywhere, and is equally energetic in England, France, and Holland." 
—J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ. 236. 

' Prof. Rickards, Population and Capital, p. 137. 



106 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

should say he reached in succession three results : first, the 
power of population to increase faster than subsistence ; 
secondly, the tendency of population so to increase — that is, 
he proved that the mere fact of passing into the stage of " di- 
minishing returns" in production has of itself no necessary 
eifect whatever to check propagation ; thirdly, the deter- 
mination., the strong and urgent disposition, of population 
so to increase, due to the power and persistence of the 
sexual instincts, under the force of which human reproduc- 
tion will go forward in spite of tlie plain warnings of pru- 
dence, in spite of increasing discomfort, squalor, and 
hunger. " Moral restraint" might, Mr. Maltlius admitted, 
intervene to stay the fatal progress ; but tliis required too 
much virtue to be reasonably expected of large masses of 
people. Hence the limit to population must be looked for 
mainly in " vice" (a preventive check to population) or in 
" misery" (a positive check). Prostitution might enter in 
disparagement of marriage ; foeticide and abortion might 
enter to diminish the average number of children to a 
marriage ; such were the methods of vice in limiting popu- 
lation by diminishing births. On the other hand, misery — 
that is, privation and excessive exertion — by aggravating in- 
fant mortality and shortening the duration of mature life, 
has been found, and is likely through an indefinite future 
to be found, the chief agency in keeping down the num- 
bers of mankind. 

Of this last result it may be said that it was a not very 
extravagant generalization of tlie experiences of most of 
the countries of Europe to which Mr. Malthus, writing be- 
fore the French Revolution had fully wrought its mighty 
work, could look to ascertain the comparative strength of 
the principle of increase and the restraints of prudence. 
He might — indeed he did — look away to a country beyond 
the ocean, wliere a popular tenure of the soil, popular edu- 
cation, and a popular control of government might be ex- 
pected to bring out the virtues of self-respect and self-re- 
straint ; but here it chanced that the political and the Indus- 



ANALYSIS OF MALTHU8IANISM. 107 

trial interests of the people coincided in encouraging the 
most rapid development of population. 

Such being the three successive but distinct results 
which make up Mr. Malthus's body of doctrine, it should 
be noted that they are not all of the same validity. The 
first result comes directly out of facts in the physical con- 
ditions of the earth and of man, which can not be impugned. 
The second, for all that is known of human physiology, 
would seem to be equally indisputable. Prof. Senior has, 
indeed, in terms, while admitting the power, denied the 
tendency ; but I must think that his denial should be 
taken as extending not to the tendency, but to what I have 
called the determination, of population to increase unduly. 
It seems incredible that Prof. Senior should have intended 
to question that population tends to increase faster than 
subsistence, so long, at least, as subsistence remains ade- 
quate to physical well-being, for it must be remembered 
that the condition of diminishing returns may begin when 
the per-capita product is still ample to afford a liberal sup- 
port to all. ISTow, a country may proceed a long time with 
diminishing returns, diminishing, it may be, very slowly, 
before squalor and hunger become the necessary concom- 
itants of an increase of population. So that, considering 
a people on the verge of that condition, it is certainly safe 
to say that subsistence can not thereafter increase as fast as 
before, because the constitution of the soil forbids ; while 
yet population may, for a longer or a shorter time, continue 
to increase as fast as before, since the reproductive capa- 
bility' is undiminished and the sexual instinct remains as 
active and strong as ever. Hence, I believe Prof. Senior 
must have meant to deny this tendency only in the degree 

* Indeed, the reproductive capability might even be increased during 
the first stages of diminishing returns. This would doubtless be so if 
the previous returns to labor had been so liberal as to encourage luxu- 
riousness and some degree of effeminacy. In this case the.first effects 
of diminished returns might be to induce a greater physical and ner- 
vous vigor. 



108 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

of force and persistency which Mr. Malthus attributed 
to it. 

It is then against Mr. Malthus's last result, namely, the de- 
termination, the strong and urgent disj>osition, of popula- 
tion to increase in spite of reason and prudence, and in 
spite of jjrivation and squalor, that all valid criticism must 
be directed. Many of Mr. Malthus's opponents have con- 
sidered that they have demolished Malthusianism when 
they have shown to their own satisfaction that the un- 
pulse to propagation is somewhat less strong, or that the 
motives and physiological tendencies which work against 
increase of population are somewhat stronger, than he re- 
presented them to be. Malthusianism, however, stands 
complete and inexpugnable on the demonstration of the 
power and the tendency of population to increase faster 
than subsistence. The gloomy forebodings of the amiable 
clergyman who promulgated the doctrine are not at all of 
its essence. Malthusianism would survive a demonstra- 
tion, on the largest scale, of the power of prudence and 
social ambition to hold the impulses to propagation firmly 
in check. 



CHAPTEE YIT. 



NECESSAKY WAGES. 



The phrase " necessary wages" makes a considerable 
figure in economical literature. By it is intended a mini- 
num below which, it is assumed, wages can not fall without 
reducing the supply of labor and thus inducing an opposite 
tendency, namely, to a rise in wages.' 

It is not meant that the employer is bound, by either 
equitable or economical considerations, to pay the laborer, 
in the immediate instance, enough to support life in him- 
self and family. The employer will, in general, pay only 
such wages as the anticipated value of the product will 
allow him to get back from the purchaser, with his own 
proper profits thereon. If, in a peculiar condition of in- 
dustiy, he consents for a time to give up his own profits, 
or even to produce at a sacrifice, it is with reference to his 
own interest in keeping his laboring force, or his custo- 
mers, together, in the expectation that a turn in affairs will 

^ " The cost of purchasing labor, like that of everything else, must 
be paid by the purchasers. The race of laborers would become alto- 
gether extinct unless they were supplied with quantities of food and 
other articles sufficient for their support and that of their families. 
This is the lowest limit to which the rate of wages can be permanent- 
ly reduced, and for this reason it has been called the natur.al or neces- 
sary rate of wages." — J. K. McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 385. 



no THE WAGES QUESTION. 

enable him to make himself good for the temporary loss. 
If he pays more than is consistent with this object, or if 
he pays any thing from any other view tlian his own in- 
terest, what he thus pays is not wages, but alms disguised 
as wages. 

Snch instances of temporary sacrifice are, however, ex- 
ceptional. In the vast majority of cases the wages which 
employers pay their workmen are governed by the price 
at which they may fairly expect to sell the product ; and 
this, whether the workmen and their families can live 
thereon or not. If now, in any conntry, at any time, 
laborers, from any cause, become in excess of the demand, 
necessary wages in that instance will not include a suffici- 
ency of food and clothing for all these laborers, but only 
for those who are wanted. 

Nor by necessary w^ages is it meant that workmen will 
not accept wages which are below the standard of subsist- 
ence. It is when men are receiving wages which give 
them a margin for the comforts of life, and perhaps some- 
thing for luxury, that they say, sometimes in very wanton- 
ness, " If we can not have such and such wages, we will 
not work," and perchance refuse offers which are as liberal 
as their employers can make. But when wages approach 
the dread line where they cease to furnish a sufficiency of 
the coarsest food, laboring men do not talk so. In coun- 
tries where there is no poor law, and where the claim to 
support is not admitted by the state, it is a thing unknown 
that a workman refuses wages because they will not keep 
himself and family alive. He takes them for what they 
are worth, applies them as far as they will go, and works 
on, perhaps "with failing strength, eager to secure the per- 
haps failing employment. If it is in the city, and the siglit 
of hixury maddens the crowd of laborers giddy with fast- 
ing, the dreadful cry of " Bread or blood " may be raised, 
and the last effort of strength be given to pillage and de- 
struction. But the single laborer, acting out his own im- 



NEGE88ABT WAGES. Ill 

piilses, takes the wages that are offered him never so surely 
as when those wages are close down upon the famine line. 
If the least smn on which a man with a wife and five 
children can subsist, be seven shillings a week, and jet in 
hard times he is offered but six shillings for his labor, this 
does not mean that one victim is to be selected from the se- 
ven and set apart to starve, while the rest are fed. It means 
that all will try to live on the scantier supply. The famine 
line is not a line which it is easy to trace. Laboring men 
and women can live for single days on what they could not 
live upon during an entire week ; they can live for a single 
week on what they could not live upon every week of the 
month ; they can even live for months on what they could 
not live upon an entire year. They can live along for 
years on a half of what would be necessary to keep them 
in robust health and with strength to labor efficiently. 
"With the aged and the young the capacity of enduring 
privation is almost indefinitely less. Yet even when each 
succumbs in his turn, the nursing child and the young man 
in his strength, the chances are that it is to some distinct 
form of disease, for which privation has prepared the way. 
Thus in Ireland, when the annual number of deaths rose 
from T7,Y54, the average of the three preceding years, to 
122,889 in 1846, and 249,335 in 184Y, it was from fever, and 
not from literal starvation, that the great mass of victims 
died.' So in India, in the famine of 1873-4, the number 
of deaths from starvation reported from districts embrac- 
ing millions of inhabitants was in some instances but three, 
five, or ten, while yet the population had been greatly re- 
duced by an extraordinary mortality from the recognized 
fonns of ordinary disease. Dr. Hunter, in his Famine 



^ The number of deaths actually attributed, ou inquest, to starva- 
tion, and so reported in the famous Irish census of 1851, was 2041 in 
1846, 6058 in 1847, and 9395 during the two years following. (Report, 
Part v., vol. i., p. 253.) 



113 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Aspects of India, has strikingly drawn the hmientable 
picture of a people entering the famine state. 

" At the outset of a famine the peoj)le fall back upon 
roots and various sorts of inferior green food. The children 
and the weaker menil)ers of the family die, and those wdio 
survive eke out a very insufficient quantity of rice hy roots 
and wild plants. The wages M'hich would not suffice to 
feed an average family of four are sufficient for the two 
or three members who survive. TJte rural 'population 
enters a famine as a frigate goes into hattle, cleared of all 
useless gear and in€ffi,Gient memhers.^^ 

We have seen that by " necessary wages" is not meant that 
masters will not oifer, or workmen receive, in the innnedi- 
ate instance, wages which are greatly and increasingly inade- 
quate to the support of life. But more than this, it is not even 
meant that any wages at all are necessary unconditionally. 
The employing class may, from causes affecting the indus- 
try of a community or a country, itself slowly disappear. 
Many regions once most fair and flourishing have, as we 
know, been stricken with a paralysis of industry, leaving 
no small part of their inlial)itants occupationless. In such 
a case not only can no particular scale of wages be said to 
be necessary, l)ut no wages at all will be necessary ; the 
population thus rendered surplus must remove if it can to 
new seats, or remaining, as is most likely, must pass rapidly 
away by the excess of deaths over births, induced by hardship 
and privation. Hence, if we will say that wages must be 
high enough to maintain the laboring class in condition to 
labor, and to keep their mimbers good, we should bear in 
mind the condition on which this alone is tnie, namely, that 
the enq:)loying class is itself kept good. 

The whole significance of the term necessary wages is 
that, in order to the supply of labor being maintained, 
M-ages must be paid which will not only enable the labor- 
ing class to subsist according to the standard of comfort 
and decency, or discomfort and indecency it may be, which 



NECESSARY WAGES. 113 

they set up for themselves as that below which they will 
not go, bnt will also dispose them to propagate' suffi- 
ciently to make up the inevitable, incessant loss of labor 
from death or disability. If the standard of living re- 
ferred to above varies among several communities or coun- 
tries, then the term " necessary wages" must be interpreted 
in each community or country according to the habitual 
standard there maintained. 

It is, then, because something besides vice and misery 
do, in a degree, limit the increase of population, that the 
question of necessary wages becomes more than the ques- 
tion of the amount of the barest, baldest subsistence which 
will keep men alive and in condition for labor. And as, iu 
fact, the standard of living vai'ies with each community or 
country, the laboring population in no two making pre- 
cisely the same requirements as the condition precedent to 
their keeping their numbers good, tlie term necessary 
wages must be understood in each country and separate 
community according to the habitual standard there main- 
tained. 

^N^ecessary wages, as thus defined, may be very low. It 
is commonly said that the lowest point which can be 
reached is that at which enough food (taking that as the 
type of expenditure), of the coarsest and meanest kind, can 



' It will be seen tliat the wages of the laborer thus raade necessary 
must include not only his own subsistence but that of those pereons, 
not themselves productive laborers, whose maintenance is a means to 
the supply of labor in the immediate future. Thus the wages of the 
bread-winners must provide food and care for women in the weakness 
of childbearing, and for children in the years of infancy. Whether 
they shall also provide food and care for the aged in their decrepi- 
tude, and for the crippled and infirm, is determined by other conside. 
rations, to be noted further on. These, at least, are not essential to the 
supply of labor ; and in barbarous countries not a few, the horrid cus- 
tom of making away with those who are regarded as a hopeless burden 
shows that the support of such is not an element of necessary wages 
among those peoples. 



114 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

be provided to sustain life and tlie ability to labor. But 
ill truth necessary wages may be a great deal lower than 
that. It is found that, throughout coimtries comprising a 
large part of the human race, the wages given and taken 
not only provide subsistence so scanty and so little nour- 
ishing that the population become stunted and more or 
less deformed and ineffective in labor ; but that even so, a 
large part of all who are born die in infancy and early 
childhood from the effects of privation. The horrible in- 
fant mortality of many districts is not accounted for solely 
by neglect of sanitary precautions, but is also largely due 
to the low diet of mothers and children. 

But necessary wages may not only be so low as to require 
the death, under four years of age, of one half the persons 
born into the community : they may be so low as to re- 
quire the phrase " to sustain life" to be very much quali- 
fied in respect to those who survive the period of childhood 
and attain the capacity to labor. In most countries, if we 
take civilized and semi-civilized together, no scale of wages 
is so necessary but that population will, in spite of an infant 
mortality aggravated almost to the proportions of a gen- 
eral massacre, increase to the point of docking one quarter, 
one third, or one half from the natural term of the industrial 
force, for all those who come to man's estate. By this I 
mean that, if adequate and wholesome food, with simply 
decent and healthful conditions of life, would, with no 
regeneration of society or perfection of individual man- 
hood, or even so much as the sanitary reformation of cities 
and dwellings, allow to persons attaining the age of 20 
years a further term, upon the average, of 40 years, popu- 
lation is still capable of increasing, in spite of the principle 
of necessary wages, until food, clothing, and filing are so 
reduced, and dwellings become so crowded, that, instead 
of 40 years, an average term no longer than 30, or even 
20 years, is allowed to those who attain manhood. Surely 
the phrase to " sustain life" needs to be qualified in such 



THE STANDARD OF LIVING. 115 

cases, where life is, in fact, from want of food and ordinary 
comforts, snstained through but a fraction of its other- 
wise natural term. 

We have thus reduced the scope of the principle of 
necessary wages by showing, iirst, that no wages at all are 
necessary unless some one sees it for his own interest to 
employ labor, and, secondly, that when wages are paid, it 
is not necessary that they should be sufficient to support 
more than two thirds or one half of the persons born into 
the world, or, in the case of those actually surviving to the 
age of labor, to " sustain life" through more than one half 
or three fourths of the natural term of labor. 

But there is nevertheless a truth in the doctrine of 
necessary wages. There is a point below which if, in any 
community, wages go, the supply of labor will not be kept 
up ; and hence if employers will have labor, they must 
pay for it up to this point. 

But it is not in every community, it is not in most com- 
munities, perhaps it is not in any community, so long as 
employment is offered at all, that the minimum of wages 
is fixed by the barest physical conditions of keeping up the 
supply of labor. Powerful as is the sexual passion,' it has 
not unresisted sway. Somewhere above the point we have 
indicated — it may be far above, it may be but a little way 
above this — men will cease bringing children into the world. 
They may — in many countries they do — increase to such an 
extent as to involve the frightful infant mortality we have 
noticed, and to reduce the term of adult life to very narrow 
limits. But they will not sink to prove the last possibilities 
of the case ; they stop short of the bald, brutal demonstra- 
tion of the inability to keep up the supply of labor upon 
scantier food, tire, and raiment ; and stopping here, they do 



* " Happily there is but one passion of the same nature ; for if there 
were two there would not be a single man left in the universe who 
would be able to follow the truth." — An Eastern writer. 



116 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

in fact give themselves some little margin of living. The 
Chinaman buys his precious drug ; the East Indian gives 
months of every year to the service of his goggle-eyed di- 
vinity. 

In Persia, Turkey, and other States of the East impera- 
tive custom requires the most lavish outlay in the period 
immediately before marriage, for which preparation or 
reparation has to be made during preceding or succeeding 
years of labor. " A man," writes Mr. Consul Taylor from 
Koordistan,' " one would not suppose to possess a penny, 
not unfrequently spends £30, raised on loan from liis em- 
ployer, that is dissipated during the seven days of riotous 
living preceding the ceremony." 

Here, then, we have the actual as distinguished from 
the theoretical minimum ; in other words, the " neces- 
sary wages," the wages that must be paid to keep the 
supply of labor good, if, indeed, it is to be kept good ; 
for that, we have seen, is not a necessity. All the 
way up from this low plane, through the scale of na- 
tions, we find j)oints established which mark the mini- 
mum of wages for one community or another, those 
wages, namely, on which that community will consent to 
keep its numbers good. Such wages thus become the 
necessary wages for that community, necessary only in the 
sense that the habits of living among the people will not 
permit reproduction sufficient to repair the natural waste 
of labor, on any lower terms, with any thing less of tlie 
" necessaries, comforts, and luxuries" of life. 

]^ow, since among most peoples food is the main object" 



* Report on the Condition of tlie Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 800, cf. 
721. In Koordistan the annual earnings of the artisan appear to range 
from £13 to £18. 

* The eminent statistician. Dr. Engel, of Berlin, has given the fol- 
lowing comparative statement as showing the average relative expen- 
diture in Prussia of families of three classes, ranging from those of 
well-to-do artisans to those of persons in easy circumstances : 



THE STANDARD OF LIVING. 



117 



upon which wages are expended, economists have been 
very much in the way of grading the " necessary wages" of 
nations according to their habits respecting food, the princi- 





Pekcentage of the Expenditure of the 
Family of 


Items o» Expenmtuee. 


]. 

A working 
man, with in- 
come of |225 to 
$300 a year. 


2. 
A man of the 
intermediate 
class, with in- 
come of |450 to 
$600 a year. 


3. 

A person in 
easy circum- 
stances, within- 
come of $750 
to $1125 a year. 


1. Food 


Per cent. 

62 

16 

12 

5 


Per cent. 

55 

18 

12 

5 


Per cent. 
50 


2. Clothing' 


18 


3. Lodginjr 


12 


4. Firing and Lighting 


5 


5. Education, Worship, etc... 

6. Lesfal protection 


95 

2 
1 
1 
1 


90 

3.5 
2 

2 
1.5 


85 

5.5 
3 


7. Care of liealth 


8 


8. Comfort and Eecreation. . . 


3.5 




100 


TOO 1 100 



From this table Dr. Engel deduces the following proposition : 
While the proportion of the total outlay upon food increases as the 
family becomes poorer, the percentage of outlay for clothing is ap- 
proximately, and that for lodging is invariably, the same in the three 
classes taken for consideration. Dr. Engel seems disposed to regard 
this very much as a lavi^ of expenditure. I am disposed to believe, 
however, that the apparent conformity has been reached by merging 
urban and rural communities which if considered separately would 
show very wide differences of expenditure on the several objects indi- 
cated ; and, secondly, that the extension of the inquiry to other lati- 
tudes and other social conditions would develop great diversity in 
these respects. The Baron Riesbeck in his Travels in Grermany (Pink- 
erton, vi. 147, 173), in 1780, notes the very marked differences existing 
between Southern and Northern Germany as to the scale of expendi- 
ture on dress. The lower orders among the Turks probably expend 
more of their earnings relatively upon dress than the higher classes. 
The same may probably be assumed respecting the ordinary Danish 
workman, who insists on passing himself off as a gentleman on Sun- 
days. Again, the scale of expenditure on lodging varies greatly ac- 
cording to social conditions. In England, Mr. Clifford says, "the agri- 
cultural laborer seldom pays, even for a good cottage, more than -^ of 
his income, and more commonly -^. The town laborer receiving 18 or 20 



118 IHE WAGES QUESTION. 

pal article in tlie diet of each being taken as indicating 
tlie wages which nnist there be paid to keep the supply of 
lal)or good. Thus it is said the Chinese will breed up to 
the point where a sufficiency of food of the meanest kind, 
even including much of Avhat we call vermin, can be 
obtained to rear a constantly-increasing number of laborers 
of small stature and low vitality. The East Indians, again, 
are satisfied with rice ;' and population in that country, 
accordingly, will increase on that diet, even in the face of 
the certainty of a famine on an average once in four or five 
years.'' The Irish, again, are satisfied with a potato diet,' 
and will increase up to the limits of subsistence on that 
food,* though at the constantly-imminent risk of a scarcity 
from the failure of that most uncertain crop. The Scotch, 



sliillings weekly will certainly not pay less tlian ^ ; tlie artisan receiv- 
ing 30, 35 shillings or £3 will pay ^ and, including rates and taxes, 
probably \. — Agricultural Lock-out of 1874, p. 240. 

In France, Lord Brabazon reports : " Whilst at about the same pe- 
riod town workmen were earning wages 53.33 per cent higher than 
agricultural laborers, these latter were paying 40.45 per cent less 
rent." — Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, p. 49. 

The well-known passion of the Netherlander for having a whole 
house, however small, to himself, must, I think, result in a larger pro- 
portional expenditure in this direction by common laborers than by 
the higher classes. I note also that Dr. Engel's computations do not 
agree very well with those given by Mr. Scott respecting the expendi- 
tures of families in Wiirtemburg. (Report on the Condition of the In- 
dustrial Classes, 1873, pp. 19G, 197, 205.) 

' Mr. Brassey says of the Coolie laborers employed on the railways 
in India : " Their food consists of two pounds of rice a day, mixed with 
a little curry ; and the cost of living on this, their usual diet, is only Is. 
a week." — Work and Wages, p. 88. 

^ " No fewer than four great scarcities, amounting almost to famines," 
since the mutiny, namely, 1861-2, 1865-6, 1868-9, 1873-4.— The Duke of 
Argyle, quoted by London Economist, May 9, 1874. 

^ " A laborer in Ireland will live and bring up a family on potatoes ; 
a laborer in England will see the world unpeopled first." — General T. 
Perronet Thompson. 

4 « Three times the number of persons can be fed on an acre of po- 
tatoes who can be maintained on an acre of wheat in ordinary sea- 
sons." — Alison's History of Europe, 1815-51, xviii., p. 11. 



FOOD HABITS. 119 

again, pitch their minimum of wages at an oaten diet ; 
the Germans, at a diet of black bread ; while the English 
insist, at the very lowest, npon wheaten bread, though un- 
fortunately not so rigidly and persistently but that a con- 
siderable unnecessary mortality at the extremes of life, and 
a lowering of the vital force among large portions of the 
actual workers, take place.' 

It will be seen that, according to this doctrine, the neces- 
sary wages of every country are fixed by the habits of liv- 
ing among the people, and that at any given time there 
is a point below which wages can not go without diminish- 
ing the supply of labor. This point may change from one 
period to another. A people broken down by industrial 
misfortune or crowded by too rapid propagation may 
temporarily be driven to a lower and meaner diet ; and in- 
stead of resenting tliis by withholding their increase, and 
thereby opening the way, or at least holding the way open, 
to a return to better times and circumstances, may accept 
the degradation to which they are thus violently brought ; 
may lay aside that self-respect and self-control which had 
hitherto kept them from sinking in the social scale, and 
consent to bring children into the world to share their own 
miserable lot. Thus, in a single generation, a new scale 
of wages may be determined, and population adjust itself 
accordingly. Instances of such lowering of the necessary 
wages of a people are unfortunately not uncommon. 



' Prof. Cairnes makes a remark in liis LogicalMetliod of Pol. Econ. 
which is liable to be misunderstood. He says : " It is not asserted 
that population in fact increases faster than subsistence ; this would, 
of course, be physically impossible." In one sense of the word in- 
crease, that, namely, which the vital statisticians intend by the phrase 
" effective increase," Prof. Cairnes's remark is unexceptionable ; but 
there is nothing to prevent persons from being born into the world in 
large numbers, for whom there is not food enough to keep them alive, 
and who must consequently die prematurely. Most people would say 
that in such cases " population in fact increases faster than subsist- 
ence." Population, of course, can not increase and remain beyond the 
limits of subsistence. 



120 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

On tlie otlier hand, a people acenstonied to a low and 
mean diet, and to circmnstanees of filtli and scpialor, may, 
mider impulses moral or economical, which it is not neces- 
sary to recite, raise themselves to a new standard of living,* 
involving a new scale of wages, which thereafter become 
necessary to them, and which determine population 
accordingly. 

Such a change, involving the substitution of the best 
wheaten bread for that of an inferior quality,'' passed upon 
the masses of the English people between 1715 and 1765. 
Food wages rose, yet, as population did not increase corre- 
spondingly in consecpience, there was a " decided elevation 
in the standard of their comforts and conveniences." Such 
a change has, by the testimony of observers who can not be 
doubted, been passing over Ireland since 1850 ; and the 
temporary relief from excessive population afforded by 
famine and forced emigration has, under the impulse of 
that terrific suifering, been taken advantage of to reach a 
somewhat higher standaixl of living.' A similar change, 
for which an easy opportunity is offered in the rapid in- 
crease of production, through the discovery of new re- 
sources in nature, and new arts and appliances in industry, 
is, I am fain to believe, passing upon not a few of the peo- 
ple of Europe who are taking advantage of the liberality of 
art and nature, not to increase their mnnbers to the limit of 
their former modes of life, but to snatch something, at 
least, as a store for the future, and something for greater 
decency and comfort in the present. 



' " The liabits of the English and Scotch laborers of the present day- 
are as widely different from those of their ancestors in the reigns of 
Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. as they now are from the habits 
of the laborers of France and Spain." — J. K. McCuUoch, Pol. Econ., p. 
393. 

•^ Malthus, Pol. Econ., p. 229. 

^ Note, for instance, the very general introduction of corumeal in 
place, in part, of the potato. (See Mr. Purdy's paper in the Statistical 
Journal, xxv. 459-GO.) 



CHEAP FOOD. 121 

It is in this view of the relation of food to the increase of 
population, that economists have very generally been agreed 
in pronouncing cheap food a source of much evil to any 
people that adopts it. This doctrine can not be better stated 
than in the language of Prof. Rogers : 

" A connnunity which subsists habitually on dear food 
is in a position of peculiar advantage when compared with 
another which lives on cheap food ; one, for instance, 
which lives on wheat as contrasted with anotlier which 
lives on rice or potatoes ; and this quite apart from the pru- 
dence or incautiousness of the people. Two instances will 
illustrate this rule. The Irish famine of 1846 was due to 
the sudden disease which affected the potato. It was 
equally severe in the northern parts of Scotland, and par- 
ticularly in the Western Highlands ; its effects, as we all 
know, were terrible ; but the same disease affected the same 
plant in England. That, however, which was distress to the 
English was death to the Irish and the Highlanders ; they 
had nothing else to resort to,^ they subsisted on the cheap- 
est food. IS^ow, were such a calamity as the potato-dis- 
ease to attack wheat in England, formidable as the conse- 
quences would be, they would not be destructive."^ 

IS'ow, I dare say Prof. Rogers would be very slow to ap- 



^ " When the standard of natural or necessary wages is high — 
when wheat and beef, for example, form the j)rincipal part of the food 
of the laborer, and porter and beer the principal part of his drink, he 
can bear to retrench in a period of scarcity. Such a man has room to 
fall ; he can resort to cheaper sorts of food — to barley, oats, rice, and 
potatoes. But he who is habitually fed on the cheapest food has 
nothing to resort to when deprived of it. Laborers placed in this situ- 
ation are absolutely cut off from every resource. You may take from 
an Englishman, but you can not take from an Irishman. The latter is 
already so low he can fall no lower ; he is placed on the very verge of 
existence ; his wages, being regulated by the price of potatoes, will 
not buy wheat, or barley, or oats ; and whenever, therefore, the sup- 
ply of potatoes fails, it is next to impossible that he should escape 
falling a sacrifice to famine." — J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 396. 

"Pol. Econ., pp. 70,71. 



123 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

prove the theory of the British Legislature in seeking, as late 
as 1774, to discourage the use of cotton goods, and to restrict 
the people to the costlier fabrics of linen, silk, and wool. 
Yet why should not dear clothing be desired as an ele- 
ment in high necessary wages, as much as dear food ? If 
necessary wages, called 100, be made up of dear food, 90, 
and cheap clothing, 10, is it not the same, in the result, as if 
the constituents were clieap food, 80, and dear clothing, 20 ? 
And, if famine comes, does not the possibility of going 
down from dear clothing to cheap clothing, from woollen,' 
say, to cotton, or from flax* to cotton, afford a margin, just 
as truly as the snljstitution of cheap for dear food ? If so, 
how does this laudation of dear food for the people con- 
sist with the laudation of the machinery which cheapens the 
clothing of the people ? Yet economists who will not 
admit the M'holesale supersedure of human labor by cot- 
ton and woollen machinery in the early part of this 
century, and the consequent throwing out of employment 
of vast numbers of men and women to sink into pauper- 
ism and squalor, to be even a qualification of the advan- 
tages of introducing machinery to cheapen clothing, are 
unhesitating in their denunciation of cheap food. 

It appears tome that cheap food, just like cheap clothing, 
ought to be, and but for tlie folly and wickedness of men 
would be, a blessing to the race ; that, to any free, in- 
dustrious, and self-respecting people, to-day, every cheap- 

'One poinidof wool manufactured into flannel costs 3s. \d. ; lib. flax 
into shirting, 2s. 4(?.; 1 lb. cotton into shirting, Is. The materials 
for a full dress of outer garments if composed of wool would not cost 
less than thirty shillings ; while the same quantity of material of cot- 
ton, and of more durable quality, costs only 7s. 6fZ. to 10s. (Mr. Ash- 
worth, quoted by Prof. Levi, Statistical Journal, xxvi. 36.) 

^ One hundred pounds of flax will produce about 200 yards of white 
cloth. One hundred pounds cotton, 300 yards of pretty equal general 
appearance, taking a medium set of light cloth as an example. (Mr. 
John Mulholland, Soc. Sc. Trans., 1807, p. 151.) 



CHEAP FOOD. 123 

ening of food is, without any qualification, an advantage ; 
that the nse of oat and corn meal, and even of the dreaded 
and despised potato, has been a help, a most important 
help, to many struggling commnnities, and may be, in 
the same degree, to-day to any community where the 
land is not locked up in feudal tenures, where industry is 
unconstrained, where class legislation has not put labor at 
disadvantage, and the native desires and aspirations of man 
are allowed fair play. Did the substitution of " rye and 
Indian" for the dearer wheat tend to degrade the people 
of !N^ew-England ? The question is grotesque in its 
absurdity. It left the more wealth and labor to be applied 
to higher uses than filling the belly. It allowed just so 
much the more to be done in the way of making decent 
and comfortable homes ; of erecting churches and school- 
houses, and supporting the ofiices of religious and secular 
instruction; of clearing the ground, opening roads, and 
building bridges ; of making ample provision for old age, 
for the endowment of dependent members of the family, 
and for the equipment of the young for their struggle, in 
their turn, with nature and with men. It allowed the child 
to go to school, not grudging the wages he might earn by 
starving his mind.* It allowed the wife and the daughter 
to keep the house, making possible that sterling sense of 
decency which has been the savor of IS^ew-England life. 
That is what the substitution of cheaper food did for early 
ITew-England, and what it might do and would do among 
any people taught to fear God and not man, accustomed 
to decent belongings, and cherishing generous aspirations. 
Has the use of the potato by the Irish in America, so far 

' No small sacrifice for poor folks. Mr. Gould in his very interest- 
ing Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Switzerland, in 
1872, estimates the average loss to working families from requiring 
the school attendance of children above twelve years of age to be £10 
to £12 per annum., for each child so withdrawn from labor (p. 349). 
Such expenses, when made " necessary," are a deal better than dear 
food. 



124 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

as it has been used — and it has been nsed very freely — been 
in any sense or in any degree an injury to them ? Far 
otherwise : it lias enabled them to acquire their little home- 
steads' the more rapidly ; it has enabled them to put tea, 
coffee, and sugar on their table ; to clothe their wives de- 
cently on w^eek days and handsomely on the Sabbath ; to 
give their children their time at school, and send them 
there with shoes and stockings^ on their feet that they 
may not be ashamed before the American children. Such 
has been the influence of the potato on the fortunes of the 
Irish in the United States ; and there is no reason, aside 
from the oppression, spoliation, and proscription practised 
for many generations by the English in Ireland, why the 
same cause should not have produced the same effect there. 
Justice and equal rights have made the Irish industrious 
and provident ; and in such a condition any lowering of 
the cost of subsistence is a distinct, unqualified advantage. 
In America the Irish, no matter how newly arrived, have 
shown a passionate eagerness to acquire homesteads, for 

' I have before me the tax and valuation lists of a township in Massa- 
chusetts containing a smart manufacturing village. The total popula- 
tion of the township was about 8300. Tlie Irish males above 18 years 
of age numbered 229. Of these, 128 paid taxes upon property. The 
total amount of estate owned by these 128 Irishmen, exclusive of all 
irnoncy in savwtj^^-innks (the deposits of these institutions being taxed 
en masse by the State without distinction of ownership), was $163,560, 
being an average to each holder of $1278. 

* " Custom has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. 
The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to ajjpear 
in public without them. In Scotland custom has rendered them a 
necessary of life to the lowest order of men, but not to the same order 
of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. 
In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the low- 
est rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, 
sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted." — Adam Smith, 
Wealth of Nations, ii. 467. 

Mr. Senior says of shoes : " When a Scotchman rises from the lowest 
to the middling classes of society, they become to him necessaries. 
He wears them to preserve^ not his feet, but his station in life."— Pol 
Econ.,pp. 36,37. 



TRE 8TANDABD OF LIVING. 125 

which they will labor and for which they will deny them- 
selves. Cheap food here has helped them to accomplish 
this object more easily and quickly. Cheap food in Ire- 
land did not tend in the same direction, but the rather 
allowed and excited a dangerous increase of population : 
and this for reasons which the public conscience of Eng- 
land has long recognized. 

All this potato-philosophy is based upon the assump- 
tion that, excepting small expenditures for clothing and 
shelter,' nothing can be made indispensable or " necessary" 
to the workingman except his food ; and that his food 
will consist practically of a single staple article, the cost 
of which will govern his whole expenditure ; and hence, 
if that staple article be cheapened, the consequences pre- 
dicted by Prof. Rogers will, in the persistence of the sexual 
instincts, i:i3vitably ensue. But we in the United States 
know very well, first, that a cheap staple ai'ticle of food 
may be compatible with a lavish expenditure on garnishes, 
fruits, condiments, relishes, and drinks f' and, secondly, that 
a great many things may be made indispensable to the 
working classes beyond their food ; that, moreover, the 
higher the industrial desires rise, the more tenacious and 
persistent they are ; that tastes, when once inspired, are 
not only more costly than appetites, but are far stronger ;' 

' " The worst-paid class in England, the agricultural laborers, ex- 
pend about two thirds of their revenues in food and one third in other 
objects." — Jones, Pol. Econ.,p. 99. 

Mr. Mill makes this strange remark respecting " the workpeople," 
having, presumably, those of England in mind : " They are not the 
■pYiac\^aXcvisioT[ieYS, if customers at all, ot most branches of manufac 
ture." It would puzzle one to tell of what branches of manufacture the 
workpeople of the United States are not customers. 

* Wheat-flour is very cheap in the United States, corn and oat 
meal relatively much cheaper. The cost of these articles can scarcely 
be said to govern the expenditure of an American family. Many a 
mechanic spends as much for milk, butter, and eggs as he does for 
flour and meal. 

^ " The great preventive check is the fear of losing decencies," — 
Senior, Pol, Econ,, p, 38, 



126 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

that the industrial desires are constantly multiplying and 
intensifying among a people where political freedom and 
social ambition exist, such desires extending themselves 
rajiidly even among new comers or persons just released 
from thraldom ; that decent and comfortable homes, with 
yards and gardens, schoolhouses and churches, may bo 
come just as " necessary" in such a conununity as food 
and drink ; that parents in such a community will gladly 
deny themselves the wages their children might earn, in 
order to send them to school, and the husband gladly deny 
himself the wages his wife might earn, in order that she 
may "• keep the house/'' When such desires and aspirations 
are once enkindled, any cheapening of the food of the 
people merely releases just so much wealth to be bestowed 
on other and higher objects. 

Let me not be understood as objecting to the proposition 
that the use of the potato by any people as tlie sole article 
of food is injurious and dangerous, but only as taking ex- 
ception to the reason assigned therefor. It is because this 
crop is a most precarious one, and because tlie potato, while 
forming an admirable element in a diversilied diet, is not 

' The proportion of breadwinners to dependants will of course vary 
greatly with the habits and dispositions of the people in the respects 
mentioned in the text. 

The results of Cantillon's computations are thus stated by Adam 
Smith : " Mr. Cantillon seems to suppose that the lowest species of 
common laborers must everywhere earn at least double their own main- 
tenance in order that, one with another, they may be enabled to bring 
up two children ; the labor of the wife, on account of her necessary 
attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient 
to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is com- 
puted, die before the age of manhood. The poorest laborers, therefore, 
according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at 
least four children in order that two may have an equal chance of liv- 
ing to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is 
supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man." — Pol. Econ. i. 71. 
The rudeness of these computations appears on the face. In Belgium, 
in 185G, 49.3 per cent of the population were reported as pursuing 
gainful occupations ; in the United States, in 1870, only 33.4 per cent ; 
in England and Wales, in 1871, 51 per cent ; in Scotland, 43.7 per cent. 



THE STANDARD OF LIVING. 127 

fitted physiologically to be the sole nutriment of human 
beings, that its exclusive use is undesirable. So far as it 
is to be used, its cheapness is a recommendation ; and if 
all other articles of food used with it could be cheapened 
to its level, it would be so much the better in any commu- 
nity where laws are free and education general. Given 
these, the native desires and aspirations of men will find 
objects enough^ on which to expend the labor which is 
released from the slavery of ministering to the merely 
animal necessities of the body. I say " slavery," for that 
labor is only truly free which is exercised as the result 
of a choice. So far as a man is driven by brutal hunger to 
work he differs not much from a slave ; when he works 
because he chooses exertion rather than privation of things 
agreeable and honorable, his labor is that of the free man. 

' Contrast tlie Swiss and tlie Russian. Consul Egerton reports that 
an incentive to labor is the great desideratum, in Russia. " In the 
truly agricultural districts the peasant, earning enough for his wants 
during the summer months, remains idle throughout the winter." — Re- 
port of 1873 (Textile Factories), p. 92, note. So much for a land where 
the people are universally ignorant, and are despotically governed. 
In Switzerland, to the contrary, Mr. Gould reports, " Men who during 
the short tourist season frequently earn as guides, porters, etc., enough 
to keep themselves and their families in comfort during the remain- 
der of the year, may nevertheless be seen in winter willingly exposing 
themselves to the severest hardships for the small sum of a franc or 
two a day." — Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1873, 
p. 346. 



CHAPTEE YIII. 

THE WAGES OF THE LABORER ARE PAID OUT OF THE PRO- 
DUCT OF HIS INDUSTRY,' 

A POPULAR theory of wages, of which we shall have here- 
after to speak, is based upon the <issimiption that wages 
are paid out of capital, the saved results of the industry of 
the past. Hence, it is argued, capital must furnish the mea- 
sure of wages. On the contrary, I hold that wages are, in a 
philosophical view of the subject, paid out of the product of 
present industry, and hence that production furnishes the 
true measure of wages. The difference may be found to 
be an important one ; and I will therefore state the grounds 
of my belief. 

An employer pays wages to purchase labor, not to expend 
a fmid of which he may be in possession. He purchases 
labor not because he desires to keep it employed, but as 
a means to the production of wealth. He produces wealth 
not for the sake of producing it, but with a view to a 
profit to himself, indi'sadually, in that production. Doubt- 
less there is a satisfaction in conferring benefits on the de- 
pendent, a pride in directing great operations, an enthusi- 
asm of work, which make up a part of the compensation 
of many employers ; but it is evident that these can not be 
relied upon to any great extent as motives to the systematic 

' The substance of this aud the following chapter appeared in the 
North American Review for January, 1875; art., 'fha Wage-Fund 
Theory. 



WAGES PAID FROM PRODUCTION. 129 

aud sustained production of wealth througli wage-labor. 
Individual profit is, and must remain, the great reason for 
production. If a person have wealth, that of itself consti- 
tutes no reason at all to him why he should expend any 
portion of it on labor, on machinery, or on materials. It 
is only as he sees that he can increase that wealth through 
production that the impulse to employ it in those direc- 
tions is felt. But for the profits by which he hopes thus 
to increase iiis store, it would be alike easier and safer 
for hun to keep his wealth at rest than to put it in motion 
for the benefit of others. 

It is true that an employer may for a time produce with- 
out profits, or even at a loss ; but this will be for the sake 
of holding together liis working force, or his body of cus- 
tomers, in the hope of better times when he can make him- 
self good for present hardship, or because he has formed 
contracts or engagements which law or business-honor 
compel him to fill at any sacrifice. These cases do not 
constitute a substantial exception to the principle that the 
motive to the purchase of labor is found in the profits of 
production. 

But again it is evident that an employer will be dis- 
posed to produce, within the limits of the agencies at his 
command, all that he can produce at a profit to himself. 
So long as additional profits are to be made by the employ- 
ment of additional labor, so long a sufficient reason for 
production exists ; when profit is no longer expected, the 
reason for production ceases. At this point the mere fact 
that the employer has capital at his command no more 
constitutes a reason why he should use it in production 
when he can get no profits, than the fact that the laborer 
has legs and arms constitutes a reason why he should work 
when he can get no wages. 

We repeat, the employer purchases labor with a view to 
the product of the labor ; and the kind and amount of that 
product determine what wages he can afford to pay. He 
must, in the long run, pay less than that product, less by a 



130 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

sum wliicli is to constitute liis own profits. If that pro- 
duct is to be greater, lie can afford to pay more ; if it is to 
be smaller, he must, for his own interest, pay less. It is, 
then, for the sake of future production that the laborers 
are employed, not at all because the employer has posses- 
sion of a fund which he must disburse ; and it is the value 
of the product, such as it is likely to prove, which de- 
termines the amount of the wages that can be paid, not at 
all the amount of wealth which the employer has in posses- 
sion or can command. Thus it is production, not capital, 
which furnishes the motive for employment and the 
measure of wages. 

But it may be said, we grant that wages are really paid 
out of the product of current industry, and that capital 
only affects wages as it first affects production, so that 
wages stand related to product in the first degree and 
to capital in the second degree only; still, does not produc- 
tion bear a certain and necessary ratio to capital ? and 
hence may not tlie measure of wages be derived from cap- 
ital virtually — though not, it is true, directly — through 
its detennination of the product ? By no means. It 
would be easy to adduce many successive reasons why 
capital bears no certain or constant ratio to production, 
but two will abundantly serve our turn. 

{a) The ratio which capital bears to the product of indus- 
try varies, all other things remaining equal, with the scanti- 
ness or abmidance of natural agents. One hundred laborers 
having the use of a capital which we will represent by 10a? 
may not, in one set of circumstances, be able to produce 
anywhere near twice as much as 50 laborers using the 
same amount of capital ; or, under a different set of cir- 
cumstances, they may be able to produce far more than 
twice as much. With unlimited natural agents, as in new 
countries like America and Australia, the 100 may, thi'ough 
the minuter subdivision of labor and the more effective 
co-operation which their numbers allow, produce twice as 
much as 50 with a capital of l'2x, or as 60 with a caj^ital 



RATIO OF CAPITAL TO PRODUCT. 131 

of 10a?. On the other hand, with limited natural agents, 
after the condition of " diminishing returns" has been 
reached, the 100 may be able to produce only twice as 
much as 50 with a capital of 8a?, or as 40 with a capital of 
10a;. 

(h) The differences in the ratio between capital and 
the product of industry which are caused by the economi- 
cal quality of a people, their intelligence, sobriety, and 
thrift, their capacity for self-direction and industrial or- 
ganization, their manual dexterity and mechanical aptitude, 
are greater even than those due to the bounty of nature. 
Griven machinery, raw materials, and a year's subsistence 
for 1000 laborers, does it make no difference with the 
annual product whether those laborers are Englishmen or 
East-Indians ? Certainly if only one quarter part of what 
has been adduced under the head of the efficiency of 
labor be valid, the differences in the product of industry 
arising out of differences in the industrial quality of dis- 
tinct communities of laborers are so great as to prohibit us 
from making use of capital to determine the amount that 
can be expended in any year or series of years in the pur- 
chase of labor. 

I have no wish to disparage the importance of the service 
rendered in production by capital, the saved results of the 
industry of the past ; but I firmly deny that it furnishes 
the measure of wages. 

But while wages must in any philosophical view of the 
subject be regarded as paid out of the product of current 
industry, wages are, to a very considerable degree, in all 
communities, advanced) out of capital, and this from the 
very necessity of the case ; while in those countries which 
have accumulated large stores of wealth, wages are, in fact, 
very generally, if not universally, so advanced, equally for 



' " EUe doit etre avancee par le capitaliste et le retrouver, par con- 
sequent, dans la valeur du produit obtenu." — A. E. Cherbuliez, Precis 
de la Science ]Economique, i. 415. 



133 THE WAGE 8 QUESTIOIf. 

the convenience of employers and of the employed. Yet 
even where the entire amonnt of the weekly or monthly 
pay-roll is taken out of a store of wealth previously gathered 
and husbanded, it is not capital out of which wages are 
borrowed, but production out of which they are finally 
paid, to which we must look to find their true measure.' 

I have said that in all communities wages are, by the very 
necessity of the case, advanced to a considerable extent out 
of capital. It is only in a few industries, mainly of the class 
termed " extractive," and in these only when pursued 
under circumstances peculiarly favorable, that the laborer 
can eat of the product of his labor for the day. The fish- 
erman, indeed, or the hunter may live from hand to 
mouth, catching and killing as he eats, though always at 
the imminent risk of privation and even of starvation. 
But the tiller of the soil must abide in faith of a harvest, 
through months of ploughing, sowing, and cultivating ; and 
his industry is only possible as food has been stored up from 
the crop of the previous year. The mechanical laborer is 
ulso removed by a longer or a shorter distance from the 
fruition of his labor. So that almost universally, it may be 
said, the laborer as he works is fed out of a store gathered 
by previous toil, and saved by the self-denial of the posses- 
sor. The extent of this provision, thus made the primary 
condition of industry, may be rudely measured by the inter- 
val between harvests. And this provision is one which is 
not made without great sacrifice, even in the most advanced 
stages of industry. Yast and varied as is the accumulated 



' Mr. F. D. Longe, in liis Refutation of the Wage-Fund Theory, 
insists on this distinction. Of the wealth or capital used " for the 
maintenance of laborers while employed in producing new goods or 
wealth," he says, it " may come either from their (the laborers') own 
resources or those of their employers, or be borrowed from bankers or 
elsewhere." Of the wealth " to be used for the purchase of their work," 
he says, it " may consist of funds belonging to the consumer or of 
funds belonging to the employer, or both, or may even be taken out of 
tlue very goods which the laborers produce, or their money value." 



SUBSISTENCE ADVANCED BY CAPITAL. 133 

wealtli of the most liiglily-civilized eommimities, the store 
of food wliich iimst ho kept on hand to meet the necessities 
of the year's subsistence constitutes no insignificant part 
of the aggregate value ; while among nations which com- 
prise, probably, two thirds of the human race, so severe is 
the struggle with nature, so hard are the conditions of life, 
so many its enemies, that, after all the painful accumula- 
tions of centuries, spring remains as it was in the days of 
Alkman, " the season of short fare," wdien the progress of 
the growing crop is eagerly watched, not with eyes greedy 
of gain, but with eyes hollow from hunger.' 

To the extent of a year's subsistence, then, it is necessary 
that some one should stand ready to make advances to the 
wage-laborer out of the products of past industry. All 
siuns so advanced come out of capital ; but it is important 
to note that it need not be the capital of the employer. 
The laborer himself may be a capitalist to this extent. 
Where the reward of industry is as liberal as it is in America 
and Australia, there is no reason why a laborer should not 
save enough out of three or five years' wages to be a year 
beforehand, and thus, so far as the employer is concerned, 
that man's labor be thereafter freed from this condition 
of provisional maintenance. Moreover, even where the 
laborers' dependence on the employer for the year's sub- 
sistence is entire, it should be cleai'ly noted (for it has been 
strangely overlooked,^ with most unfortunate results in the 

* " There is in Ireland," says Alison, " what is called the ' starving 
season,' which is about six weeks before the ' new harvest.'" — Hist 
Europe, xxi. 204. 

^ " A very little consideration will render it evident that laborers 
whilst engaged in any particular industry can not live upon the com- 
modity which their labor is assisting to produce. The ploughman 
who tills the soil from which in the following autumn the harvest will 
be gathered, is /erf with the wealth which Ids master has saved; or, 
in other icords, the master pays his laborer's wages from the wealth 
which he has previously saved." — Prof. Fawcett, Political Economy, 
p. 19. 

Here we find asserted or assumed, (1) the necessity of the laborer for 



134 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

popular theory of wages) tliat this by no means involves 
the payment of his entire wages in advance of the harvest- 
ing of the crop or the marketing of the goods. There is 
nothing in the need the laborer has of provisional mainte- 
nance which defeats his claim to a payment, over and 
above the mere cost of his subsistence, out of the product 
when completed. It may be that poor Piers, the plough- 
man, must, as Professor Fawcett says, depend daily until 
harvest u})()n the squire for bread out of the crop of the 
last year ; but surely that constitutes no reason wliy Piers 
should not at harvest receive some sheaves as his own. 
And in the case of all laborers of a higher class, whose 
wages may be perhaps twice or three times the cost of 
their bare subsistence, it is evident that, in countries where 
capital is scarce, the advances which are likely to be made 
to them during the year will leave a very consideraljle por- 
tion of the wages to be taken out of the product at the close 
of the year. 

But how largely, in fact, are wages advanced out of capi- 
tal ? In old countries, to a very great extent certainly. 
Yet even in these there is but a small proportion of 
cases where wages are paid oftener than once a week — that 
is, where the laborer does not trust his employer with six 
days' work. And in some exceptional industries it hap- 
pens that the employer realizes on his product' in a shorter 



maintenance while the crop is growing ; (2) his entire dependence on 
the employer for that maintenance ; (3) the natural equivalency of 
subsistence and wages. 

* I may mention, in illustration, the case of transportation compa- 
nies, owning railroads, canals, steamboats, or coaches. The employees 
of such companies in the United States niimber hundreds of thou- 
sands, and they are rarely paid by the day, commonly by the week or 
month. Yet the companies collect all their fares for passage and a 
portion of their charges for freight, daily. They are thus always 
in debt, often to a vast amount, to tlieir laborers (using that term in its 
generic sense) for services which have been rendered to them, and of 
which they have availed themselves to the full extent. So that the 



EMPLOTEBS m DEBT TO LAB0BEB8. 135 

time than this, so that the laborer is not only paid out of 
the product of his industry, but actually advances to the 
employer a portion of the capital on which he operates. 
Quite as common, probably, even yet in countries which 
we may call old, as weekly payments are monthly pay- 
ments ; and here the probability that the laborer may re- 
ceive his wages out of the price of this marketed product 
increases with the quadrupled time given the employer to 
dispose of it. Tet even here the cases are doubtless excep- 
tional where the employer does not have to " stand out," 
for a longer or a shorter time, of the amount which he 
pays in wages, though always, be it remembered, in the 
expectation of a reimbursement out of the product when 
marketed, the anticipated price of the product determin- 
ing the amount which he can safely thus advance. 

In new countries, by which we mean those to which 
men have gone with the industrial ideas and ambitions of 
older communities, but with an amount of capital which, 
from the necessity of the case, is more or less inadequate 
to the undertakings for which their skill and labor qualify 
them, the wages of labor are paid only partially out of 
capital. The history of our own country so amply illus- 
trates this statement that we need not go elsewhere for 
examples. From the first settlement of the colonies down 
to the discovery of gold in California, laborers, whether in 
agricultiu'e or in manufactures, were, as a rule, hired by 
the year, and paid at the end of the year. Bare subsistence 
might be furnished by the employer meanwhile ; small 
amounts of money might be advanced " for accommoda- 
tion ;" the laborer's tax bill or doctor's bill might be settled 
by the employer ; but these payments were not to such an 
extent (except in case of protracted sickness or sudden mis- 
fortune) but that the employer was always in debt to his 
laborer. 

companies are virtually carrying on their operations on capital a por- 
tion of which is advanced by their own employees. Many other ex 
amples might be given. 



136 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

I have before me a considerable collection of accounts 
taken from the books of farmers in different sections as late 
as 1851. These show the hands charged with advances of 
the most miscellaneous character. There are charges for 
grain and salted meats from the product of the previous year, 
for cash for minor personal expenses, for bootmaker's bills, 
grocer's bills, apothecary's bills, doctor's bills, and even town- 
tax bills, settled by the employer, for tlie use of teams for 
hauling wood for the laborer, or breaking up his garden 
in the spring. Yet in general the am omit of such advances 
does not exceed one third, and it rarely reaches one half, of 
the stipulated wages of the year. Now it is idle to speak 
of wages thus paid as coming out of capital. At the time 
these contracts were made the wealth which was to pay 
tliese wages was not in existence. At the time these ser- 
vices were rendered, that wealth was not in existence. It 
came into existence only as the result of those contracts 
and the rendering of those services. 

]^ot less distinctly did this system of paying wages pre- 
vail in the department of manufacturing industry during 
the same period. Extensive incpiiries have satisfied me 
that manufacturers in NeM'-England did not generally 
leave off paying their workmen by the year until after 
1854 or 1855. Some of the more successful were able to 
make the change to quarterly or monthly j)ayments as eai'ly 
as 1851. A gentleman conducting one of the largest, 
oldest, and most successful manufacturing establishments 
in Massachusetts informs me that, up to the earliest of the 
dates mentioned, his firm paid their workmen yearly ; 
and any hand requiring an advance of wages on work done 
was charged interest at cm*rent rates to the end of the 
year. 

Kow in this there was nothing mijust or ungenerous. 
Such an arrangement was the very condition on which 
alone the industry could be prosecuted, on which alone 
employment could be given. Capital was scarce, because 
the country was comparatively new ; and if wages had been 



PBODUGTION THE MEASURE OF WAGES. 137 

measured by capital, wages must liave been low ; but at 
the same time production was large/ because natural 
agents were copious and efficient, and labor was intelligent 
and skilful, and as it is production, not capital, which 
affords the measure of wages, wages were high ; but the 
workmen had to wait for them till the crop was harvested 
or the goods sold. And this they gladly did, and never for 
an instant suspected they were being paid out of capital ; 
indeed, they knew better, for they had seen growing under 
their hands that in which they were finally paid. In the 
Middle States the change referred to came a few years 
later than in Kew-England ; yet by the outbreak of the 
civil war monthly or weekly payment of wages had proba- 
bly become more general than paytnent by the year. 

Farther to the West and South the change to monthly 
and -weekly payments has, in many sections, not yet begun. 
In these parts of our country the payment of wages 
out of capital is scarcely more common than it was in 
]N"ew-England a hundred years ago. The employer ad- 
vances to the laborer such provisions and cash as are 
absolutely required from time to time ; but the " settle 
ment " does not take place until the cUse of the season or 
of the year, and the final payment is often deferred until 
the crop is not only harvested but sold. 

But whether wages are advanced out of capital in whole, 
or in part, or not at all, it still remains true that it is the 
product to which the employer looks to ascertain the 
amount which he can afford to pay : the value of the pro- 
duct furnishes the measure of wages. Whe7i the em- 
ployer shall pay is a financial question ; what he shall pay 
is the true industrial question with which we have to do in 
treating wages. This is determined by the efficiency of 
labor under the conditions existing at the time and place. 



1 "Capitalists and laborers receive large remuneration in America 
because their industry produces largely."— J. E. Cairnes, Some Lead- 
ing Principles, etc. , p. 463. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THEEE IS NO WAGE-FUND IRRESPECTIVE OF THE NUMBER 
AND INDUSTRIAL QUALITY OF LABORERS. 

We can not well go farther in our discussion without con- 
sidering a tlieoiy of wages which has been very generally- 
accepted by the political economists of the English school, 
namely, that of a Wage-Fund. 

The doctrine is in substance as follows : 

There is, for any country, at any time, a sum of wealth 
set ajDart for the payment of wages. This fund is a por- 
tion of the aggregate capital of the country. The ratio 
between the aggregate capital and the portion devoted to 
the pajnnent of wages is not necessarily always the same. 
It may vary, from time to time, with the conditions of in- 
dustry and the habits of the people ; but at any given time 
the amount of tlie wage-fund, under the conditions exist- 
ing, is determined in the amount of capital. 

The wage-fimd, therefore, may be greater or less at 
another time, but at the time taken it is definite. The 
amount of it can not be increased by force of law or of 
public opinion, or through sjanpathy and compassion on 
the part of employers, or as the result of appeals or 
efforts on the part of the working classes.' 

' " That which pays for labor in every country is a certain portion 
of actually-accumulated capital, which can not be increased by the 
proposed action of government, nor by the influence of public opinion, 
uor by combinations ^mong the worKmeu themselves, Tliere is alsQ 



THE WAOE-FUND THEOBT. 139 

The Slim so destined to the payment of wages is distri- 
buted by competition. If one obtains more, another must, 
for that reason, receive less, or be kept out of employment 
altogether. Laborers are paid out of this sum, and out of 
this alone. The whole of that sum is distributed without 
loss ; and the average amount received by each laborer is, 
therefore, precisely determined by the ratio existing be- 
tween the wage-fund and the number of laborers, or, as 
some writers have preferred to call it, between capital and 
population.^ 

The wage-fund having at any given time been deter- 
mined for that time, the rate of wages will be according to 
the number of persons then applying for employment.'' 
If they be more, wages will be low ; if they be fewer, 
wages will be high. 

I have stated this doctrine minutely, with something of 
iteration, and with full quotations, in order to avoid all 
suspicion of misrepresenting that which I propose to assail. 
An excellent summary of the doctrine is that given by Mr. 
John Stuart Mill, in the Fortnightly Keview for May, 1869, 
as follows : 

" There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of 
wealth which is unconditionally devoted to the payment of 
wages of labor. This sum is not regarded as unalterable, 
for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the pro- 



in every country a certain number of laborers, and this number can not 
be diminislied by the proposed action of government, nor by public 
opinion, nor by combinations among themselves. There is to be a di- 
\asion now among all these laborers of the portion of capital actually 
there present."— A. L. Perry, Pol. Econ., p. 132. 

^ " The circulating capital of a country is its wage-fund. Hence if 
we desire to calculate the average money-wages received by each 
laborer, we have simply to divide the amount of this capital by the 
number of the laboring population."— H. Fawcett, Economic Position 
of the British Laborer, p. 120. 

'"■'■The demand for labor consists of the whole circulating capital of 
the country, * * * * The supply is the lohole laboring popula- 
fion,"—J. ^, Mill, Fortnightly Review, May, 1869. 



140 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

gress of wealth ; but it is reasoned upon as at any given 
moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount 
it is assumed the wages-receiving class can not possibly 
divide among them ; that amount, and no less, they can not 
but obtain. So that the sum to be divided being fixed, the 
wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of 
participants." 

The doctrine of the wage-fund has found wide accept- 
ance on both sides of the Atlantic. The natural history of 
the notion on which it rests is not obscure. It grew out 
of the condition of affairs which existed in England during 
and immediately suljsequent to the Napoleonic wars. Tm'O 
things were then noted. First, capital had become accumu- 
lated in the island to such an extent that employers found no 
(financial) difficulty in paying their laborers by the month, 
theweek, or the day, instead of requiring them to await the 
fruition of their labor in the harvested or marketed product. 
Secondly, the wages were, in fact, generally so low that they 
furnished no more than a bare subsistence, while the em- 
ployment offered was so restricted that an increase in the 
number of laborers had the effect to throw some out of 
employment or to reduce the rate of wages for all. Out 
of these things the wage-fund theory was put together. 
Wages are paid out of capital, and the rate is determined 
by the ratio between capital and population. 

Both the facts observed were accidental, not essential. 
Wages in England Avere paid out of capital because capital 
had become abundant, and employers could just tis well as 
not pay their laborers as soon as the service was rendered. 
In the United States,' at the same time, employers were 



' " The spread of this doctrine in the United States is not to be ex- 
plained in the same way. It would seem to have been accepted, so far 
as it has been accepted, upon the authority of the English economists. 
Certainly the conditions which have been noted as prevailing in Eng- 
land during the period when the laborer's subsistence came to be 
identified with his wages, have at no time been known in the United 
States. Here the people; have not been shut out from the land ; the 



WAaBS Ilf THE UNITED STATES. 141 

paying their laborers larger wages, but obliging them to 
wait for the whole or a considerable part till the product 
should be harvested or marketed. In the United States, 
therefore, the industrial conditions were more favorable 
to the payment of wages, while in England the financial 
conditions were more favorable. But it is the industrial 
conditions which determine the amount of wages, the 
necessaries, comforts, and luxuries which the laborer re- 
ceives ; the financial conditions only determine the manner 
and time of payment, whether at once or at a future day, 
whether in money or in goods, etc. 

Again, the fact that in England, at the time this doc- 
trine sprang up, an increase of the number of laborers 



laboring classes have been able to make and have made vast accumu- 
lations, and the great bulk of wages have, since the first settlement of 
the country, been paid, not out of capital, but out of the completed pro- 
duct when harvested or marketed. 

" The wage-fund seems to have been considered, we know not why, a 
pillar in the temple of free-trade. Certainly the line drawn in the 
United States between those who have accepted it and those who have 
combated it, or let it severely alone, appears to intimate a general 
sense of some such relation between the doctrines. We find no trace 
of it among the writers known as protectionists. Professor Bowen 
distinctly rejects it. Messrs. Daniel Raymond and Peshine Smith omit 
all allusion to it, so far as we have observed. Mr. Carey, it is true, 
gave it countenance in his Essay on Wages ; but then Mr. Carey 
was a free-trader in 1835. On the other hand. Professors Vethake, Bas- 
oom, and Perry, who take strong ground against governmental inter- 
ference with the methods and courses of industry, all strongly pro- 
nounce the wage- fund theory. 

" Dr. Wayland, whose treatise on Political Economy, though publish- 
ed in 1837, would appear (see Preface) to have been mainly composed 
prior to the emergence in distinct form of the wage-fund theory, fol- 
lowed Malthus in his statement of the law of wages. (Wayland's Pol. 
Econ.,p. 312.) Excepting Dr. Wayland, Mr. Amasa Walker is the 
only American writer on systematic political economy, of the free- 
trade school, whom we remember as giving no countenance to the 
wage-fund theory. It can scarcely need to be said that we regard the 
idea of an essential connection between the two doctrines as wholly 
mistaken. Free-trade rose without this theory of wages, and will sure- 
ly not fall with it," — North- American Review, cxx., pp. 93, 94, note. 



143 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

applying for employment involved, as it doubtless did, a 
reduction in the rate of wages, was due to the circumstance 
that English agriculture, in the then existing state of chemi- 
cal and mechanical knowledge, had reached the condition 
of " diminishing returns." But at the same time in the 
United States, the accession of vast bodies of laborers was 
accompanied with a steadily-increasing remuneration of 
labor, and States and counties were to be seen bidding 
eagerly against each other for tliese industrial recruits. 

That English writers shoidd have been misled, by what 
they saw going on around them, into converting a generali- 
zation of insular experiences into a universal law of wages, 
is not gi-eatly to be wondered at ; but that American writ- 
ers should have adopted this doctrine, in simple contempt 
of what they saw going on around them, is indeed sur- 
prising.' 

I would not impeach the scientific impartiality of those 
who first put forward in distinct form this theory of wages ; 
but it may fairly be assumed that its progress towards 
general acceptance was not a little favored by the fact that 
it afforded a complete justification for the existing order of 
things respecting wages. If there was, in truth, a definite 
fund out of which wages were paid ; if competition un- 
erringly distributed the Mdiole of that snm ; and if no 
more could be paid to the wages class, as a whole, without 
impairing capital, diminishing employment, and thus in 
the end injuring the laborers themselves, then surely it 
was aa easy task to answer tlie complaints or remon- 

' We have had a right to do better than this in political economy, in 
the United States. " The Americans are Englishmen whose intelli- 
gence is not intimidated and whose condnct is not controlled by many 
of the influences derived from tradition and authority, which govern 
the beliefs and actions of the mother country. From, the course taken 
hy the United States, ire may often eorrectly interpret the bent which out 
nation will follow as they gradually escape, for good or evil, from the 
domination of the past." — Address of Lord Napier and Ettrick as 
President of the British Social Science Assoc' "'on, 1872. (Transac- 
tions, p. 17.) 



TEE WAGE-FUND THEORY. 143 

strances of the working classes, and to demonstrate the 
futility of trades-unions and strikes as means of increasing 
wages. If an individual workman complained for himself, 
he could be answered that it was wholly a matter between 
himself and his own class. If he received more, another 
must, on that account, receive less, or none at all.' If a 
workman complained on account of his class, he could be 
told, in the language of Prof. Perry, that " there is no use 
in arguing against any one of the four fundamental rules 
of arithmetic. The question of wages is a question of 
division. It is complained that the quotient is too small. 
Well, then, how many ways are there to make a quotient 
larger ? Two ways. Enlarge your dividend, the divisor 
remaining the same, and the quotient will be larger ; 
lessen your di^asor, the dividend remaining the same, and 
the quotient will be larger." (Pol. Econ., p. 123.) 

A most comfortable doctrine surely,^ and one which 
made it a positive pleasure to conduct a quarterly review 
in times when the laboring classes were discontented or 
mutinous. If the workman would not give up when told 
to enlarge his dividend, he was struck dumb on being in- 
formed that his only alternative was to lessen his divisor. 
The divisor aforesaid being flesh and blood, with certain 



' " If law or opinion succeeds in fixing wages above tins rate, some 
laborers are kept out of employment." — J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., i. 483. 

^ The writer lias been sharply criticised for having said in a public 
address at Amherst College, in 1874, that " by the wage-fund theory, 
whatever is in wages, is right." This has been referred to as an in- 
stance of misrepresenting an opponent's position, the more easily to 
refute him. I confess myself so dull of apprehension as now, not- 
withstanding the effect of this castigation in sharpening my wits, to be 
unable to understand wherein my proposition is objectionable, even on 
the ground of my critics. If the wage-fund comprises all that can be 
paid in wages ; if that fund is unfailingly distributed by competition ; 
if farther to increase wages would be to trench on capital, and thus di- 
minish future employment, and thus work permanent injury to the 
laboring classes, together with the rest of the community, why is it 
not right that the employer should pay just such wages as he does ? 
Why would it not be wrong were he to pay more ^ 



144 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

attachments to home and life, and with a variety of incon- 
venient affections, was not to be lessened so easily. If the 
workman turnad him from words to blows, and went ont 
" on strike " with a view to l)etter his condition, it was 
regarded as the act of an irrational animal whose in- 
stincts, unfortunately, were not politico-economical. S trikes 
could not increase the wage-fund ; strikes did not diminish 
the number of applicants for employment ; therefore, it 
was plain as a pikestaff that strikes could not raise wages. 

I^ow, it may seem wanton to break such a pretty toy as 
this ; but the fact is that the wage-fund theory is demon- 
strably false, contrary alike to the reason of the case and 
to the course of history. 

1st. As has been shown in a former chapter, wages are 
really paid out of current production, and not out of capi- 
tal, as the wage-fund theory assumes. 

{a) Granting, for the moment, that u^ages are wholly 
advanced out of capital to supply the immediate necessities 
of the laborer, I have, I think, abundantly proved that 
the two questions, whether labor shall l)e employed at all, 
and, secondly, what wages sliall be paid to laborers if em- 
ployed, are decided by reference to production and not 
to capital. It is the prospect of a profit in production 
which determines the employer to hire laborers ; it is the 
anticipated value of the ])roduct which determines how 
much he can pay them. The ])r()duct, then, nnd not capi- 
tal, furnishes at once tlie motive to emjjloyment and the 
measure of wages. If this be so, the whole wage-fund 
theory falls, for it is built on the assumption that capital 
furnishes the measure of wages ; that the wage-fund is no 
larger because capital is no larger,' and that the only way to 

' " It thus appears tliat if population increases without any increase 
of capital, wages fall ; and that if capital increases without an increase 
of population, wages rise. It is evident, also, that if both increase, 
but one faster than the other, the effect will be the same as if the one 
had not increased at all, and the other had made an increase equal to 
the difference." — James Mill, Pol, Eeon., p. 43. 



EFFIGIENGT AFFECTS WAGES. 145 

increase the aggregate amount which can be paid in wages 
is to increase capital. 

(b) But as matter of fact, wages are not wholly ad- 
vanced by capital, but are paid out of the product of the 
labor for which wages are due, as has been shown in the 
preceding chapter. This alone, which is indisputable, in- 
validates the theory we are considering. 

2d. But there is more and worse to be said against the 
wage-fund. It will be noted that by every statement of 
this doctrine which we have quoted, the amount that can 
be paid in wages is taken as fixed irrespective of the num- 
ber and quality of laborers seeking employment. If, then, 
the laborers be few, wages will be high ; if they be many, 
wages will be low, for the number of laborers is taken as 
the divisor of a predetermined dividend. Let us consider 
this. 

{a) This assumption disregards all those elements, 
brought out to view in Chapter III., which go to make 
up the efficiency of the laborer. Thus, granted a certain 
store of provisions, of tools, and of materials for produc- 
tion, sufficient, say, for 1000 laborers, those who hold the 
wage-fmid assert that the same rate of wages (meaning 
thereby the actual amounts of necessaries, comforts, and 
luxuries received by the laborer) would prevail whether 
those 1000 laborers be Englishmen or East-Indians ; or, if 
Englishmen, whether they be, as a body, drunken, ignorant, 
wasteful and indolent, or possessed of all the economical 
virtues. Ultimately, it is held, the former state of things 
would reduce capital, and hence reduce wages ; but, in the 
exact present, the rate of wages is fixed by the ratio be- 
tween the predetermined wage-fund and the number of 
laborers applying for employment, and employers can and 
will pay the rate so fixed. 

On the contrary, is it not true that the present economi- 
cal quality of the laborers, as a whole, is an element in as- 
certaining the aggregate amount that can now be paid in 
wages ; that as wages are paid out of the product, and as 



146 TBE WAGES QUESTION. 

the product will be greater or smaller by reason of the 
workman's sobriety, industry, and intelligence, or his want 
of those qualities, so wages may and should be higher or 
lower accordingly f 

{h) But, again, since wages are paid out of and measured 
by the product of industry, and since productive power 
may be increased by the invention of machinery, the dis- 
covery of arts, and the improvement of processes, without 
any immediate increase of capital, ought it not to be possi- 
ble that wages should be enhanced by such causes, popula- 
tion and capital being assumed, for purposes of argument, 
to stand still ? Now, the wao-e-fund advocate concedes 
that such inventions and improvements will increase capital, 
and hence become the reason for an advance in a more or 
less distant future ; but only as they first increase capital 
can they increase the wage-fund. 

Let us discuss this point. 

We will take a community having a capital represented 
by 100,000, a population represented by 1000, and an an- 
nual product represented by 10,000, of which labor receives 
TOOO. Let it be supposed that the productive power of 
this community is increased at once 10 per cent by im- 
provements in tools, implements, and machinery through 
all the departments of its industry. The new machinery 
is brought into use. The capital of the community has 
not been thereby increased ; on the contrary, all such in- 
ventions involve a temporary diminution of capital. The 
old machinery becomes useless, while a portion of the 
previously-circulating capital has to be taken for the new. 



' The view here taken of the relation of the laborer's efficiency to 
his wages substantially coincides with that presented by Prof. Stanley 
Jevons in his Theory of Political Economy, pp. 256-262, and by Prof. 
Hearn, of Melbourne, in his Plutology. Mr. Jevons styles his own 
views " somewhat heretical." Mr. J. L. Shadwell, writing in the " In- 
dependent Section" of the Westminster Review (January, 1872), ad- 
vances " the efficiency of labor" as one great cause for the variations of 
wages, wholly independent of increase of population or of capital. 



INVENTIONS AFFECT WAGES. 147 

The capital, whether we consider the aggregate capital or 
circulating capital only, being certainly no larger, wages 
can not at present, the wage-fund advocate declares, be in- 
creased, although the productive power of the community 
is greater, by 10 per cent, from the moment the new ma- 
chinery begins to move. The»product is now 11,000 ; but 
as capital is now something less than 100,000, wages must 
even be something less than before. The additional 1000 
of product will therefore go to the share of capital, although 
there is less capital than before. And it is only as the 
capitalists, in their uncontrolled discretion, decide to save 
this addition to their income, or a portion of it, for future 
reproductive investment, instead of spending it upon their 
own pleasure, that capital will be increased, and, with that 
increase, increase of wages be realized. 

Now, to the contrary, I hold that the moment the aggre- 
gate product of labor and capital is increased by inventions, 
which are a clear gain of power for the benefit of all,' that 
moment a sufficient economical reason exists for an ad- 
vance of wages in some degree corresponding. In the 
case supposed, the share of the laborers in the 1000 gained 
might be found to be 700, or it might be but 690, or it 
might rise to 710. 

(c) But the most signal f tillacy of the wage-fund doctrine 
remains to be noted. Waiving now all consideration of 
the economical quality of the laborers in any given com- 
munity, and of the possible gain in production through 
improvements and inventions, irrespective of any increase 
of capital, let us inquire what foundation there is for the 
assumption that an increase in the nmnber of laborers in- 
volves a proportionate reduction in the amount of wages 
going to each. 

Let us take, first, a community which has not reached 
the condition of " diminishing returns." The number of 

* I omit purposely all consideration of the limited monopoly ot in- 
ventions created by law for the encouragement of ingenuity. 



148 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

laborers l)eing taken as 100, let the amount of capital 
accumulated be represented by 100«. By the wage-fund 
theory a certain rate of annual wages will result fi-om the 
ratio between these quantities. Now let us suppose that 
twenty additional laborers arrive, bringing with them 
capital 20«. The ratio between capital and population 
remains the same as before, and by the wage-fund tlieory 
no increase of wages can result. Upon our principles, 
however, an increase of wages may result, because an in- 
crease of production will occur. 120 laborers with 
capital 120«, can and will produce more, per man, 
in a community which has not reached the con- 
dition of " diminishing returns" than 100 laborers with 
capital lW)a. A more effective co-operation will become 
possible, a minuter subdivision of labor will result, and 
the greater laboring force of the community will enable 
them to undertake highly-remunerative enterprises to 
which their numbers were previously inadequate. In the 
same way, it might be that in this same community 150 
laborers with capital IhOa would produce more, per man, 
than the 120 laborers ; and that 200 laborers only equally 
endowed might produce in a higher degree, 7>'>' cajnta^ 
than 150. The reader is referred to Chapter V. for a fuller 
discussion of the industrial possibilities of such a commu- 
nity. Now, through all this, it is to be noted tliat our 
results are directly in contradiction of the wage-fund 
theory, which asserts that wages are determined by the 
ratio between capital and population. 

Now, if there is such power in association and in the 
subdivision of employments that the j^roduct may be 
largely increased although the capital, per man, remains 
the same, the reader will scarcely question that the opera- 
tion of these causes might suffice to keep the per capita, 
product good, though the capital, per man, should fall off 
somewhat. Yet this result, again, would be in contradic- 
tion of the wage-fund theory. Indeed, it is quite conceiv- 
able that a considerable nmnber of laborers might be 



WAGES NOT A PROBLEM IN DIVISION. 149 

added to a community without bringing with them any 
capital at all, yet the per capita product be actually in- 
creased thereby. It is insight into this condition of pro- 
duction that gives motive to the exertions put forth by 
almost every Western and Southern State, and almost 
every Western and Southern county, to attract immigra- 
tion. Capital they want, and they would much prefer 
immigrants with capital ; but they want immigrants any- 
how. These communities are not acting foolishly. They 
are not calling in additional laborers to divide with them a 
predetermined product. They know perfectly well that 
the product will increase as the producers increase, and 
that, in their situation, the product will increase faster 
than the producers ; and therefore that each x3roducer may 
have more, and not less, by reason of the arrival of immi- 
grants. 

Laborers have come to us from every part of the world, 
and constantly has the existing body of laborers been 
benefited by the accessions. Some of these laborers have 
brought with them small amounts of capital, and have 
been all the more welcome on that account. But, however 
they have come, were it with but a bundle on a stick, 
there has been room and work enough for all. Labor has 
had its periods of distress ; but these have been due to 
the interference of government with industry, to false 
currencies, to extravagant speculation, or to other causes, 
but not to any real excess of labor. 

In contradiction, then, of the view that wages are uni- 
versally determined by the ratio between capital and pop- 
ulation, we see that in countries which have not reached 
the condition of " diminishing returns," the per-capita 
product may be largely increased while the amount of 
capital, per man, remains the same, and that it may even 
be increased, though, of course, not in the same propor- 
tion, while the amount of capital, per man, is actually re- 
duced by the accession of new bodies of laborers destitute 
of accumulations. 



150 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But suppose now that the condition of "diminish- 
ing returns" is reached ; that the accessions to population 
have continued until all the eligible land is taken up, and 
the first course of simple improvements made. If further 
accessions are made, we may then expect to sec the wages 
of labor fall, not because there is a greater number to divide 
among them a predetermined dividend, but because the 
annual product is not increased proportionally to the in- 
crease of labor. Nature fails to resjjond to fresh applica- 
tions with its former generosit}-. Under this condition, 
five men now produce, as they always must produce, more 
than four, but not one fourth as much more. The five 
must, therefore, submit to receive each less than the four 
had received, that is, the wages of labor must fall. They 
fall because production has sustained a check, through the 
limitations of natural agents. 

But this process of reduction in wages may, and gene- 
rally will, proceed slowly, first, because for a long time 
the labor of the new-comer, while it will not be quite as 
productive as was that of the community upon the average 
previous to his arrival, will yet not fall far short of it, 
nature giving long warning against an undue increase of 
population, and having great patience with men ; and, 
secondly, because the limits of production are being con- 
stantly pushed backward by the discovery of new re^ 
sources, by increased economy of labor, by improvements 
of method, by the application of distinctly new arts, by 
the invention of machinery, and by the utilization of 
waste. But through all these the tendency now is to 
" diminishing returns," and hence to lower wages. 

Under these conditions, then, is the wage-fund theory 
true ? We answer with confidence that this theory can 
never he true, for it excludes altogether the contribution 
which the new-comer, the additional laborer, makes to 
the production of the community in which he is so un- 
welcome an arrival. The wage-fund doctrine regards him 
as a pure addition to the divisor, without recognizing the 



FALLACY OF TEE WAGE-FUND. 151 

fact that his labor must also add something to the divi- 
dend. He no longer contributes more, far more to pro- 
duction than the cost of his own subsistence, as in an ad- 
vancing state of industry, before natural agents are fully 
occupied and employed. He no longer contributes as 
much as he requires. But he still contributes something, 
and that something, however small it may be, helps to 
swell the amount that can be paid in wages.' 



' See the remarks by Prof. Senior on tlie possibilities of English 
agriculture, quoted on p. 97. 



PART II. 



DISTRIBUTION 



CHAPTEU X. 

THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION: COMPETITION: THE DIFFU- 
SION THEORY : THE ECONOMICAL HARMONIES. 

Having discussed much at length certain principles in 
the production of wealth, in that connection showing the 
falsity of the current doctrine of a wages-fund, we come 
now to the problem of distribution, wherein we may look 
to find the true philosophy of wages. 

But is there a problem of distribution ? Can there be 
a philosophy of wages ? Certainly if we exclude the ques- 
tion of rent, the orthodox* economists have scarcely rec- 
ognized a problem of distribution, and were it not for the 
space taken for refuting the opinions of heretical writers, 
what the text books have to say on the subject of wages 
would be very little. How, indeed, can there be a philoso- 
phy of wages, when the doctrine of a wages-fund prevails ? 
If the question of wages is simply a question in long-divis- 
ion, what need to take much space to illustrate the opera- 
tions of " one of the four fundamental rules of arithmetic." ^ 
Population being given, there is no philosophy of wages. 
The whole question of the well-being of the laboring-class 
is, then, reduced to a question of population. Here phil- 
osophy becomes possible ; but the question of population 
does not belong in the department of distribution at all. 

' " L'economie politique que j'appellerais volontiers orthodoxe. . . 
Bemblait etre definitivement constituee, Comme I'eglise de Rome, elle 
avait son Credo." — E. de Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15 
1875 » See p. 143. 



156 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

But even the wage-fund doctrine aside, the economists 
of the Manchester School liave not been disposed to regard 
the problem of distribution, the question of rent excepted, 
as one of much urgency or difficulty. Thej have been of 
the opinion expressed by Chevalier, thirty-five years ago, 
that this department of political economy is inferior in 
interest and importance to that of production.* This has 
not been from a disposition to disregard the effects on 
human happiness, and the strength and stability of the 
state, wrought by a good or an ill distribution of the pro- 
ducts of industry ; but from a belief in the absolute suffi- 
ciency of economical forces, in a state of industrial free- 
dom, to diffuse all burdens and all benefits alike, to the 
highest advantage of the industrial community. Laissez 
faire : let these principles work unhindered, has hence come 
to contain pretty much the whole theory of distribution as 
held by the writers of this school. To such it can only be 
a matter of curious interest, so far as they are concerned 
as political economists, what are the facts of the distribu- 
tion of wealth at any given time, or what the moral and 
social condition of any single class of the community. If 
things are wrong, they need only to be let to work them- 
selves right, under the impulsion of purely economical 
forces ; and such forces are constantly operating for the 
redress of grievances, and the repair of inequalities. If 
aught is wrong at present, it is simply because the free 
play of economic forces has been hindered by arbitrary 
enactment, or illegal violence in the past: the one thing 
required to bring about industrial relief is industrial free- 
dom. So completely satisfied are the writers of this school 

* " Certes, le partage des produits du travail est digne de toute la 
Bollicitude de quiconque a de rintelligence et du coeur. Cependant, 
elle est moins urgente d discuter, et pratiquement elle sera Men moim 
emharrassante que celle de raccroisement liarmonique et regulier de 
la production." — Troisieme discours d'Ouverture du cours de I'aimee 
1841-3. 



TEE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. 151 

with the sufficienc,y of the force they invoke to secure a 
right distribution, that they refuse to make political free- 
dom a coridition,^ necessary or even important, for the 
successful operation of that force. The question of wages 
is no different in the United States from what it is in 
Eussia, by i-eason of differences in the political institutions 
of those countries. It differs nothing in Austria from 
what it is in Prussia, by reason of the wide difference in 
popular intelligence existing between those countries. 
The ballot can do nothing to enhance wages : social oppor- 
tunities can do nothing, except as they operate in restraint 
of population; sympathy and respect for labor can do 
nothing. The economical force is all-sufficient, granted 
only a state of industrial freedom. 

COMPETITION. 

Competition it is, and competition alone, to which the 
economist looks to accomplish the distribution of the pro- 
ducts of industry. Competition expresses the desire and 
the effort of the buyer to buy as cheaply, and of the seller to 
sell as dearly ; of the one to give as little, and of the other 
to get as much, as he can ; and inasmuch as every man is 
at once 2 buyer and seller, we say he gives as little and gets 
as much as the existing conditions of industry allow. 
Competition involves, therefore, we see, a free, easy and 

* Let me not seem, by omission, to do injustice. Many of the 
writers of this school have recognized, in the fullest manner, not only 
the moral and social, but also the industrial, advantages of education 
and political freedom, in increasing the productive power of the work- 
man ; but for the distribution of wealth, they hold strictly economical 
forces to be suflBcient. 

^ No man can buy anything, unless at the same time, he sells 
something ; else he does not buy the thing he gets ; it is given to him. 
When a man buys a pound of meat he sells a shilling, more or less 
The butcher may say, I will send home the meat now, and you may 
hand in the shilling at the end of the week, or of the month ; but the 
credit given does not alter the substantial relations of the parties to 
the transaction. 



158 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

sure resort to the best market, whatever be the thing that 
is to be bought or sold. 

If competition be perfect, no question can be made of 
its result in an equable division of all burdens and diffu- 
sion of all benetits throughout the industrial society. 
Let us consider the laborers and the employers of labor in 
a state of active competition. Each laborer will sell his 
labor at the highest price which any employer can aflbrd 
to give, since the employers are in competition among 
themselves for labor. Each employer will get his labor at 
the lowest price at which any laborer ^ can afford to sell 
it, since the laborers are in competition among themselves 
for employment. The lowest price at which any laborer 
will sell his labor is thus the highest price which any 
employer can afford to pa}'. If we suppose the rate of 
wages to any single laborer to be reduced, be it ever so lit- 
tle, below the highest price which any employer can afford 
to pay, the competition among emploj'ers for the extra 
profit thus offered will speedily reduce that margin to the 
minimum. If again we suppose the wages obtained by a 
single laborer to be above the average of his class, the 
resort of his fellows to that better market ^ will instantly 
afford his individual employer all the labor he requires 
at the usual rate. So much for the reduction or elevation 
of the wages of a single laborer below or above the stand- 
ard ; but if we suppose that standard to be lowered, and 
the wages of the whole body of laborers to be reduced, we 
shall then iind a like satisfactory result wrought out in 
one of two ways ; either the employers, getting their 
labor for less, will sell their products at correspondingly 
reduced prices, and the laborers will thus, as consuin- 

' We here assume tlie industrial quality of all laborers to be the 
eame, and all employers to stand on the same footing as regards busi- 
ness capacity and credit. 

* "Every scene of competition is called a market," — F. W. Nevy 
man, Lectures on Pol. Econ., p. 5. 



COMPETITION. 159 

ers,* make good their nominal loss as producers, or, if pricea 
be maintained, the enhanced profit thus afforded on each 
pound, bushel or yard of the product will incite each 
individual employer to produce all he can, and for this 
purpose to employ all the labor he can ; and employers 
will thus be brought to bid against each other until the 
margin of extra profit wholly disappears, and the lowest 
price at which any laborer will sell his labor will thus 
again become the highest which any employer can afibrd 
to pay. On the other hand, if we suppose the standard of 
wages to be raised a,nd the body of laborers to receive a 
larger compensation, then it will follow from the action 
of competition, that either prices will be raised corre- 
spondingly and the laborers lose as consumers what they 
have nominally gained as producers, or, prices remaining 
the same, the employers will find their profits trenched 
upon, and this, diminishing the motive to production, will 
diminish the employment offered, which will induce com- 
petition among the workmen for employment, which will 
restore the standard of wages. 

The above account will hold good of laborers and em- 
ployers found in the same locality and engaged in 
the same occupation. But if we assume laborers and 
employers to be dispersed among different localities and 
occupations, precisely the same result would, in a con- 
dition of absolute competition, be effected without loss 
and without delay. Laborers would seek employers or 
employers laborers, with perfect facility, across the divid- 
ing lines, whether territorial or industrial. All inequal- 
ities of condition would thus be immediately reduced. 
The effort of each to get the most possible for himself 

' " For this class (the proletaires) as for all, the operation of com- 
petition is two-fold. They feel it both as buyers, and as sellers of 
services." — Bastiat, " Harmonies of Pol. Econ.," p. 280. Doubtless • 
but do they feel it equally, in their two capacities ? For what Prof 
Cftirnes calls " the excessive friction" of retail trade, see p. 313-5. 



160 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

would simply result, with equal strength and opportuni- 
ties, in giving the same to all. 

By the operation of the same principle, any burden — 
say, a tax — imposed arbitrarily upon any class, whether 
of persons, of industrial processes, or of products, is distri- 
buted equally over the whole community. That burden, 
wherever iirst imposed, becomes an element in determin- 
ing the actual net advantage enjoyed in their place by 
the class of persons, upon whom, or upon Avhose processes, 
or upon whose products, the burden is laid. The dimi- 
nution thus effected in their substantial remuneration, 
will either cause their products to rise in price, while the 
same quantity is produced by the same number of laborers 
(which may be the case if the products are of prime 
importance or necessity) ; or laborers and employers will 
leave these avocations until the prices of their products, 
thus diminished in quantity, are raised by scarcity to a 
point which will afford wages to laborers and profits to em- 
ployers equivalent, after full account be had of the excep- 
tional burden, to those enjoyed in other departments of 
production. This is the reasoning of those who hold the 
diffusion theory of taxation. 

Such is the operation of unhindered competition, 
achieving a beneficent distribution of the products of 
industry, equalizing all burdens and all benefits through- 
out the industrial community. These are the Economical 
Harmonies celebrated by Bastiat. Of course no one ever 
supposed that competition was perfect in any place, or in 
any department of human activity; but the political 
economists of the Manchester School have felt themselves 
at liberty to treat the questions of distribution precisely 
as if competition were perfect, regarding the failures as so 
far exceptional as not to impair the substantial validity- 
of practical conclusions based on the assumption of uni- 
versal competition. Our further course will lead us to 
investigate this assumption of a competition so general 



THE MANOEESTEB SCHOOL. 161 

that the exceptions thereto may for practical purposes be 
disregarded ; and if wa find the exceptions nnmerous and 
important, to inquire how far the conchisions based on 
competition alone require modification to meet the condi- 
tions disclosed. — But first, of a term just used. What is 
The Manchester School of Political Economy ? 

It is usiiallj spoken of as the school of Free Traders ; ^ 
but this, in my estimation, does not present the real char- 
acteristic of the class of writers included by the term. 
There were Free-traders before Manchester ; there are 
Free-traders who are not of Manchester. 

I should rather define the Manchester school to consist 
of those free traders who carry into the department of 
Distribution, that assumption of the economical sufficienc3'^ 
of competition which the whole body of free-traders accept 
when dealing with the questions of Exchange ; who fail to 
recognize any difi'erences between services and commodities, 
between men and merchandise, which require them to modi- 
fy their doctrine of laissez faire, looking on a Manchester 
spinner as possessing the same mobility economically, as 
being under the same complete subjection to the impulses of 
pecuniary interest, as a bale of Manchester cottons on the 
wharf, free to go to India or Iceland as the difference of a 
penny in the price offered may determine ; free-traders, 
who, to come down to single practical questions, object to 
laws against truck ^ as an interference with the freedom 
of contract ; who oppose exceptional legislation respecting ** 
the employment of women under ground in mines and at 

* Le point de depart des Katlieder-socialisten est entierement different 
de celui des econoniistes orthodoxes, qu'ils designent sous le nom de 
Mancliester-tlmin, ou secte de Manchester, parce que c'est en effet, 
I'ecole des libres echangistes qui a expose avec plus de logique les dog- 
mes du Credo ancien." — Laveleye. — Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 
July, 1875. 

' See this term defined and truck practices described, pp. 324-42. 

• Fawcett, Speeches, p. 130. 



163 TBE WAGUS QUESTION. 

factory labor during pregnancy and for the period im. 
mediately succeeding confinement, on the ground that such 
matters should be regulated by the interest of the parties 
thereto ; who, while perhaps approving, on social consid- 
erations, laws regulating the employment of cliildren in 
mines and factories,^ yet deny that such regulations 
have any economical justification, holding that self-interest 
is here, again, a sufficient guide ; who object to laws oi 
compulsory rules respecting apprenticeship, or admission 
to the professions, to the governmental regulation or in- 
spection of industrial operations, and to any and all acts of 
the state directed to the promotion of prudence and fru- 
gality on the part of the working classes. It was to the 
effects of such teaching that Prof. Cairnes referred when he 
said : " Laissez faire, freedom of contract, and phrases of 
like import, have of late become somewhat of bugbears, 
with a large number of people. It is enough to mention 
them to discredit by anticipation the most useful practical 
scheme." ^ 

But it may be here asked, are not the Manchester econ- 
omists merely more consistent and thorough than those who 
stop short in their advocacy of freedom from legal restraints 
when they leave the department of exchange ; does it not 
amount to this, that the Manchesterians stick to their 
principles, while others do not ? It is to be in a position to 
meet this question that I have stated the theory of com- 
petition so much at length ; and I now answer, no ques- 
tion of principle is involved, but only a question of tlict. K 
one will deny that if competition be perfect, a right distri 
bution will be effected by its agency, but on the other hand 
no one can claim that any such assurance exists if com- 
petition be seriously impaired. If laborers and employers 

« The Factory Act of 1844 was passed against the opposition of 
the majority of English economists in Parliament and out. 
• Essays in Pol. Econ. p. 251. 



LA1S8EZ FAIBE A PBAGTIGAL RULE. 163 

do not in fact,i whatev er the cause, resort to the best market, 
then injuries may be inflicted on labor or on capital, and 
no economical principle whatever will operate to secure 
redress. The entire justification for laissez faire is found 
in an assumed sufficiency of the individual motive-force to 
reach the best market. With immobility, total or partial, 
there is no certainty, or probability, of an equalization 
of burdens and benefits, or of the propagation, without 
delay or loss, of any economical impulse whatever. 

Competition, to have the beneficent effects which have 
been ascribed to it, must be all-pervading and unremitting ; 
hke the pressure of the atmosphere of which we are happily 
unconscious because it is all the while equal within and 
without us, above and below us. Were that pressure to be 
made unequal, its effects would instantly become crushing 
and destructive. So it is with competition ; when it becomes 
unequal, when the ability of one industrial class to respond 
to the impulses of self-interest is seriously reduced by igno- 
rance, poverty, or whatever cause, while the classes with 
which it is to divide the product of industry, are active, 
alert, mobile in a high degree, the most mischievoua 
effects may be experienced. 

Free traders, therefore, who decline to carry the rule of 
laissez faire into the department of distribution, are not 
dodging their principles. They deny that the condition 
which alone justifies that rule, exists in this department. 
With respect to merchandise, destitute alike of sympa- 
thies and antipathies, competition is so far perfect that 
it may be reasoned upon as if no obstruction to exchange 
existed. The one additional penny of profit will send the 
bale of goods east or west, north or south, to kinsman or 
to stranger, to black man or white, with absolute indiffer- 
ence. But with that strange bundle of " apathies, sympa- 
thies and antipathies "2 called man, bound by manifold 



• Tlie mobility of labor forms the subject of Chap. XI. 
» Charles Lamb — Essays of Elia. 



164 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

strong atta.3hmeiits to place and scene, to home and friends, 
weighted with daily burdens, almost or quite to the limit 
of his strength, beset with reasonable and with supersti- 
tious fears, a prompt resort to the best market must so 
evidently be a matter of great uncertainty, that no econo- 
mist can justly be accused of abandoning his principles 
who refuses to trust wholly to the individual impulse for 
the right distribution of the products of industry. The 
question of a competition sufficient or insufficient to this 
end, is a question of fact. And it is important to be borne 
in mind that the obstructions to competition which defeat a 
right distribution, are not physical merely, or mainly, but 
moral ; ignorance, superstition, timidity, procrastination, 
mental inertia, love of country, love of home, love of 
friends. So much for the obstructions to competition, 
on the side of the working classes. But it is equally impor- 
tant to note that a further effect prejudicial to them may 
be produced b^'' the greed of employers counteracting a 
true regard for their own self-interest. The theory of 
competition assumes that the employer in seeking his own 
interests will become the conservator of the interests of 
the laborer, there being a true harmony of interests be- 
tween them. This may be so, as Prof. Cairnes has noted, 
with interests as they really exist, and as they would be 
seen by an enlightened eye. But it does not follow that 
the employer's interest, as he may regard it, coincides with 
the interests of those dependent on him for employment. 
" This chasm in the argument of the laissez faire school 
has never been bridged. The advocates of the doctrine 
shut their eyes and leap over it." * 



But here we have to meet the further questions : grant- 
ing that competition is in fact impaired to an extenl 

* Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 246. 



IMPEBFEGT GOMPETITION. 165 

which allows serious and lamentable injury to result in the 
distribution of the products of industry, from the inability 
of persons and classes to resort to their best market, is it 
the part of the legislator or of the economist to do or to 
speak otherwise than as if competition were perfect ? Are 
we not to accept competition, as it is, for what it can now 
do ; and wait for the action of economical forces in gradu- 
ally perfecting it ? Does not the existence of competition, 
however much impaired, establish a steady tendency which 
must sooner or later wear out the obstructions which are 
admitted to beset the resort to the best market, on the part 
of no inconsiderable portion of the industrial community ? 
And meanwhile, to repeat, should we argue or act other- 
wise than as if competition were complete ? 
To these questions I have to answer as follows : 

1. The reader is referred to what has been said in Chap- 
ter lY. on the degradation of labor : the breaking down of 
the laboring population through industrial distress and dis- 
aster. It was there sought to be shown, that if the blow, 
in its suddenness or its severity, bears more than a certain 
ratio to the power of resistance, the chances are many, 
human nature being what it is, that the wages class will 
succumb, that is, that they will accept the harder terms 
imposed upon them ; and, on the one hand, through a less 
ample or nourishing diet and meaner conditions, and on 
the other, through a loss of self-respect and perhaps the 
contracting of distinctly bad habits, they will become 
unable to render the same amount and quality of service 
as before. This result being reached, not only is there 
not a tendency in any economical forces to repair the 
mischief, but even the occurrence of better times and new 
opportunities, if brought about from the outside (as for 
example, by the discovery of new resources in nature, or 
new powers in art), would not serve to restore the shattered 
industrial manhood. 

2. Such disasters aside, tie tendency of purely econora- 



166 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ical forces is continually to aggravate the disadvantages 
from which any person or class may suffer. The fact ot 
being worsted in one conflict is an ill preparative for 
another encounter. Every gain which one party makes 
at the expense of another, furnishes the sinews of war for 
further aggressions ; every loss which one person or class 
of persons sustains in the competitions of industry, weak- 
ens the capability for future resistance. This principle 
applies witli increasing force as men sink in the industrial 
scale. Emphatically is it true that the curse of the poor 
is their poverty. Cheated in quantity, quality and price ^ 
in whatever they purchase, they are notoriously unable 
to get as much, proportionally, for their little, as the rich 
for their larger means. Economically speaking, this 
must ever remain true, and operate with increasing powei 
Moral forces may indeed enter to restore the equilibrium ; 
the liberality of nature may afford to the weaker class a 
margin sufficient for them to long maintain themselves; 
the discovery of new arts and new resources may open up 
fresh opportunities for retrieving loss; but, through all, it 
cannot be controverted that the tendency of purely eco- 
nomical forces is to widen the differences existing in the 
constitution of industrial society, and to subject any and 
every person and class of persons who may, from any 
cause, be at disadvantage in respect to selling his or their 
service or product, to a constantly increasing burden. 

3. Progress toward freedom is not necessarily accom- 
plished by indiscriminately throwing off restraints, 
either in the political or the industrial ^ body. True, men 

* Count Rumford's Essays contain much interesting matter in 
illustration of the losses which the working classes suffer in the do- 
mestic use of what they have purchased, from the want of simple and 
elementary apparatus for cooking, storing, etc. 

" Thus, I cannot hesitate to assent to the opinion of M. Say, that 
the breaking down of all the fraternities in Paris, after the Revolution 
of 1830, and the sudden rush, without order or discretion, of a mob oi 



THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. 161 

onlj learn to swim by going into the water ; only make 
•■heir eyes of use by going into the light ; but, out of 
regard to human weakness, exposure to either element 
should be conducted with measure, and in order. While 
progress toward freedom is to be made by the removal of 
industrial restrictions, it does not follow that the removal 
of any specific restriction at any given time, conduces to 
such progress. The restriction may be, in the situation 
existing, correspondent to an infirmity which cannot so 
summarily be done away. A crutch operates by restraint 
only ; but it is a restraint which prevents a lame man from 
falling to the ground, whence he might liave no strength 
to raise himself again; while, if artificially sustained, he 
may be able to achieve a very considerable freedom of 
movement and of action. A law prohibiting a child under 
eight years to work in a factory, operates by restraint only ; 
but it is a restraint upon parental folly or greed, which may 
prevent a horrible waste of physical force, and cause a 
larger amount of actual labor to be accomplished during 
the entire term of life, than would be effected were the 
child to be stunted by premature exposure and hardship. 
For this reason I believe, with Mr. Horner, that " the 
interposition of the legislature in behalf of children, is 
justified by the most cold and severe principles of political 
economy." i 

labor into trades immemorially restricted, was the cause of great 
disaster in 1831 ; that it would have been better, both for the trades 
and for the mass of outside labor, had the barriers been removed more 
gradually. 

» " Employment of children in factories," p. 15. Mr. Horner, who 
was government inspector of factories, states that in the lace mills of 
Nottingham, children, 9 to 15 years of age, were frequently employed 
20 hours on a stretch, from 4 a.m. to 13 at night, [p. 14.] He quotes a 
witness who testified that " being frequently detained in his counting- 
house late at night, till 13 or 1 o'clock, he has often, in going home, in 
the depth of winter, met mothers taking their children to the neigh- 
boring print-works, the children crying." [p. 133.] 

Dr. Villerme, in his memorable report to the French Academy 



168 THE WAGES QUESTION. 



Just how much force, on purely economical principles 
has the objection urged against many proposed measures, 
that they are in violation of the freedom of contract ? Le* 
us candidly but searcliingly consider this question. What 
is the authority of laissez faire * when levelled against a 
factory act, or a proposition to restrain truck ? Laws 
in restraint of trade, or interfering with the times and 
methods of employment, with wages and prices, are not 
mischievous because they violate a theoretical self-suffi- 
ciency of labor, but because they effect a certain actual 
result. What is that result ? They diminish mobility, 
which, as we have seen, is the prime condition of compe- 
tition, while competition affords the only security the 
laborer can have that he will get tlie utmost possible for his 
service. The mischief of such laws is simply and solely 
that they are obstructive. Here, then, and not in the 
shibboleth, laissez faire, laissez passer, we have the true 
test of the expediency of a proposed regulation of indus- 
try or trade. Does it practically obstruct movement ? 

used tlie following language iu writing of the factory laborers of 
Alsace : " The rents in the manufacturing towns and villages imme- 
diately adjoining, are so high that they are often obliged to live at the 
distance of a league and even a league and a half. The poor children, 
many of whom are scarcely seven years old, and some even younger, 
have to take from their sleep and their meal-hours, whatever is required 
to traverse that long and weary road, in the morning to get to the 

factory, in the evening to get home To judge how excessive ia 

the labor of children in the factories, one has only to recollect that it 
is unlawful to employ galley-slaves more than 12 hours a day, and these 
13 must be broken by two hours for meals, reducing the actual labor 
to ten hours a day ; while the young people of whom I speak have to 
toil 13 hours, and sometimes 1'^%, independent of their meal times." 

* "So understood, I hold it to be a pretentious sophism, destitute of 
foundation in nature and fact, and rapidly becoming an obstruction 
and nuisance in public affairs." — J. E. Cairnes' Essays in Pol. Econ. 
p. 253. 



LA188EZ FAIRE. 



161 



But is it said : every restriction or regulation is in some 
degree, obstructive ? Eight and wrong, at once. Restric- 
tion and regulation are olstruetive as against a pre-existing 
condition of perfect practical freedom. But perfect free- 
dom obtains in nothing human. Tliere are obstructions 
on every hand, not physical only, but also intellectual and 
moral. May not a regulative act well conceived to remove 
certain moral and intellectual obstacles to free action, have 
the effect to promote, not retard, industrial movement ? 

For instance : take the transfer of real estate. An act 
for the registration of ownei'ship is restrictive upon 
transfers; yet can any one doubt that judicious provis- 
ions for registration, instead of retarding transfers of land 
and buildings, do in fact, in the most important degree, 
promote them ? The compliance with the requirement of 
registration is indeed, in itself, an obstruction : it involves 
a certain expenditure of labor and money ; a few shillino-s 
and an hour's time. But it gives every possible buyer 
such an assurance as to his title and the history of the 
property, as constitutes an intellectual and moral help in 
the acquisition of estates, of the greatest effectiveness.^ 
For it should be borne in mind, in all discussions relating 
to the exchange and distribution of wealth, that fear, 
ignorance, superstition and custom are as truly obstruc- 
tive as are rivers and mountains ; and if a registrative pro- 
vision gives certainty and clearness, where before was 
doubt and apprehension, or utter ignorance, it may pay 
a thousand times over, for the nominal hindrance to 
action which is involved in a formal compliance with its 
requirements. 

It is difficult to see how perfect freedom becomes the 
condition of economical, any more than it is of political, 
security and advancement. Why should not the throw- 
ing-off' of economical restrictions among a people lono 

' In England, the absence of a system of registering titles has bur 
dened the transfer of estates most oppressively. 



170 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

abused and deeply abased, be accomplished with the same 
caution, and the same regard for the order of things, as 
the social and political emancipation and enfranchisement 
of oppressed masses ? Yet we find writers who would 
ridicule the notion that one form of government is equally 
e:ood for all peoples, or that any form of government could 
be good for any people, which had not respect to national 
peculiarities of character and structure ; who hold that no 
people long degraded can safely be raised at once to politi- 
cal freedom ; and even insist that among a people long 
habituated to universal suffrage, and with traditions of 
self-rule extending through centuries, stringent limitations 
should be imposed on the popular will : we find, I say, 
these writers declaring for the removal of all restrictions 
throughout industrial society, even such as are of a regu- 
lative character merely, not only without regard to the 
habits or condition of the people, but equally without 
regard to the order in which such restrictions should be 
removed. 

For myself, I am utterly at a loss to conceive how such 
reasoners, some of whom are conservatives and pessimists 
of the deepest dye in politics, justify their optimistic radi- 
calism in industry. Certainly, if, as Chevalier, the great 
apostle of free trade in France, has said, Political Econ- 
omy and politics rest on the same principles, ^ there would 
seem to be as much virtue in judicious and disinterested 
restraint in labor, as in government or society. Nowhere 
has restraint any positive virtue; no life or healing comes 
out of it ; but grave evils may be suppressed ; great waste 
and mischief prevented by it. 

But while I hold that discretion and order should be 
observed in throwing off social, political and economical 
restrictions, alike, I hold this in no desponding or distrust- 

^"L'economie politique s'appuie sur les memes principes que Ij 
politique." — 8th Discours d'ouverture de I'annee, 1847-8. 



THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. 171 

ful vein. I believe that society and industry may unload 
rapidly, if in due order; that there is something in the 
very name of liberty to which the heart of man, in what- 
ever condition, responds ; and that men who believe in 
freedom are the safest guides in directing the progress of 
a people toward perfect freedom. I do not say that 
progress should be made slowly ; but that it should be 
made by steps, by due gradation — and with something 
of preparation for each successive stage of the advance. 



What then is the problem of Distribution ? 

We have seen that so far as differences exist in respect to 
the ability and opportunities of the several classes of indus- 
trial society to resort swiftly and surely to the best market, 
such difference must put at an economical disadvantage the 
class suffering the greatest relative obstruction, and con-., 
fer corresponding advantages at their expense, upon the 
class or classes more favorably situated and better en- 
dowed. We have seen, moreover, that such disadvantages, 
be they great or small, at the outset, are cumulative ; that 
the word " to him that hath shall be given, and from him 
that hath not shall be taken away even the little that he 
seemeth to have," is a law of universal operation and a 
very unharmonizing tendency; that economical forces, 
thus, instead of bringing redress, tend to crowd further 
down the classes who enter the struggle weakest. 

If, then, the political economist finds the obstructions be- 
setting the resort to the best market, existing in the present 
condition of industrial society, to be, in fact, serious, is he 
not bound to abandon a rule of conduct based on the 
assumption of a competition so general that it may for prac- 
tical purposes be deemed universal, and to study critically 
the condition of the several classes of persons making olaim& 
pn the product of industry with a view to ascertain what help 



173 THE WAGES QUESTIOK. 

can be brought from the outside, in the absence of any repar- 
ative virtue in industrial causes, to supply the deficiencies oi 
competition ? Failing to find relief in economical forces, ha 
will look away to moral forces to achieve the emancipation 
of the economically oppressed classes, not by taking them 
out from under the operation of economical laws, for that 
is impossible, but by providing the conditions (intelligence, 
frugality and sobriety, political franchises and social ambi- 
tions) which will secure that mobility, that easy, quick and 
sure resort to market, which alone is needed to give scope 
and sway to the beneficent agencies of competition. 
Fortunately he may look with confidence to see this 
amelioration coincide with a continued increase in the 
productive power of labor, due to fresh advances in the 
arts and sciences, which will facilitate the upward move- 
ment. 

Meanwhile the question whether any specific legislation 
in protection of the working classes (say, a factory act), or 
any measure of regulation and restraint adopted by an in- 
dustrial class for their own benefit (say, a trades union 
rule), is likely to promote the desired object, should be 
treated, I suggest, on the following principle. Remem- 
bering that the one thing to be secured for the right dis- 
tribution of wealth, is perfect competition, it should be 
inquired, whether that act or measure will, all things con- 
sidered, on the whole and in the long run, increase or dimin- 
ish the substantial, not the nominal, freedom of movement. 
If the efilect would be to quicken the resort to market, then, 
no matter how far restrictive in form, it must be approved. 
But in considering the probable tendencies of such acts or 
measures, we should bear in mind how great are the 
liabilities to error and corruption in legislation ; how cer- 
tain is the administration of the law to fall shori of its 
intent ; how much better most results are reached through 
social than threugh legal pressure; how destitute of ali 
positive virtue, a 1 healing efficacy, is restraint, its onli 



THE PROBLEM OF DISTBIBUTIOI^. 173 

office being to prevent waste ; how frequently, too, good 
acts become bad precedents. ^ 

Yet these considerations, strong as they are, do not 
suffice to create doubt in my mind of the justification, on 
purely economical grounds, of laws for the registration of 
real estate, for the limitation or prohibition of truck, 01 
for the regulation of the labor of children, of women, or 
even of men, in accordance with the dictates of the most 
advanced sanitary science. In Chapter XYIII, questions 
will arise respecting the practical influence of legislation 
upon the substantial freedom of industrial movement. 
These will be discussed with single reference to the prin- 
ciple of judgment here set up. And when the question 
of trades unions and strikes comes before us, it will be 
treated on the same grounds. I shall not deem the 
question to be decided against these agencies by the fact 
that they take the form of inhibition and restriction ; 
but shall hold myself bound to inquire whether they do, in 
their time and place, increase or diminish the freedom 
and the fulness of the laborer's resort to market, bearing 
in mind that his practical ability to accomplish that resort, 
is made up of a material element, the means of transporta- 
tion and of provisional maintenance, and of intellectual 
and moral elements, quite as essential. 

' " It is one tliiug to repudiate the scientific authority of laissez 
faire, freedom of contract, and so forth : it is a totally difi'erent thing 
to set up the opposite principle of state control, the doctrine of pa- 
ternal government. For my part, I accept neither one doctrine nor the 
other, and, as a practical rule, I hold laissez faire to be incomparably 
the safer guide. Only let us remember that it is a practical rule, and 
not a doctrine of science ; a rule in the main sound, but, like most other 
sound practical rules, liable to numerous exceptions ; above all, a rule 
which must never for a moment be allowed to stand in the way of the 
candid consideration of any promising proposal of social or industria! 
reform." — J. E. Cairnea' Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 251. 



CHAPTEll XI 



THE MOBILITT OF LABOR. 



We have seen that, with perfect competition, the work 
ing classes have ample security that they Mall, at al. 
times, receive the greatest amonnt of wages which is 
consistent with the existing conditions of industry. The 
object of the present chapter is to ascertain, if we may. 
how far the actual mobility of labor corresponds to that 
theoretical mobility which is involved in perfect compe- 
tition. 

And first, we note that the theoretical mobility of la- 
bor rests on the assumption that laborers will, in all things 
and at all times, pursue their economic interests ; that they 
perfectly comprehend those interests, and will suffer 
nothing to stand in the way of their attainment. Of 
course the men of whom this can be predicated are not 
real human men. They are a class of beings devised for 
the purposes of economical reasoning in accordance with 
the definition given by Mr. Mill in his " Essays on some 
Unsettled Questions in Political Economy," as follows: 
"Political Economy is concerned with man solely as a 
being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of 
judging of the comparative efficacy of means to that 
end. . . It makes entire abstraction of every othei 
human passion or motive, except those which may be 
regarded as perpetually antagonizing pi-inciples to the 
desire of wealth, namely, aversion to labor and desire of the 
present enjoyment of costly indulgences. These it takes 
to a certain extent, into its calculations, because these d( 



TEE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 175 

not merely, like other desires, occasionally conflict with 
the pursuit of wealth, but accompany it always as a drag 
or impediment, and are therefore inseparably mixed up 
in the consideration of it. Political Economy considers 
mankind as occupied solely ^ in acquiring and consuming 
wealth." 

But thus to frame a system of economics upon the as- 
sumption of the perfect, unintermitted, unimpeded action 
of one, and that not always the most potential, of many 
human motives, is it not, as Dr. Whewell lias said, ^ as if 
the physical geographer should construct his scheme in rec- 
ognition of gravitation alone, disregarding the power of 
cohesion in preserving the original structure of the earth's 
surface, and should thus reach the conclusion tliat all the 
mountains must at once run down into the valleys and the 
face of nature become a plain ? In much the same way the 
economist of the d, priori school disregards the original 
structure of industrial society, the separation of classes 
and nations, the obstructions offered by differences of race, 
religion and speech,^ the effects of strangeness and appre- 

* If Mr. Mill had said, " Political economy considers mankind solely 
as occupied in acquiring and consuming wealth," the statement would 
have been unexceptionable. But if " Political economy considers man- 
kind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth," Political 
economy considers mankind most falsely ; and the results in economi- 
cal reasoning of that unwarranted assumption have been most mis- 
chievous. Political economy is not bound to consider mankind so far 
as they are occupied in anything else than in acquiring and consuming 
wealth ; but it is bound in simple honesty not to consider them as oc- 
cupied in acquiring and consuming wealth when they are not, and to 
a degree they are not. 

Introduction to R. Jones' Pol. Econ. 

* The effects of speech-differences in preventing the easy and rapid 
flow of labor are clearly to be seen in France and Scotland. The 
greater number of the Bas Bretons cannot speak or understand French, 
and are hence confined more closely to their native fields, than the 
people of any other section. [Report of H. B. M. Consul Clipperton, 
1872, p. 160.] 

The commissioners of the Scotch Census of 1871 found the influ 



176 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

hension of change, the constraints of ignorance and super- 
stition, the attachments of home, country and friends, the 
helplessness of men in new occupations, the jealousy of im- 
ported labor,^ and perhaps more than all else, the inhibition 
of migration, in the case of perhaps the vast majority of 
the race, by the want of the supplies of food and money 
necessary to their removal and immediate subsistence. 

Does the coaiparison seem extravagant ? Look at China. 
There is found a population of three or four hundred 
millions, of M^hose mode of life and means of subsistence 
travellers give accounts that are simply shocking ; reduced 
to the vilest food, the vilest clothing, the vilest shelter, or 
none at all of the latter two classes of assumed necessaries. 
Opposite their own land lies a region of great fertility, 
containing vast expanses with an average population of 
trom one to four, six or ten to the square mile. Why hag 
not this mountain run down into this valley : Why have not 
untold millions poured upon our shores to relieve the fear- 
ful internal pressure of the Celestial Empire ? The rea- 
sons are too familiar to need to be stated. The fact is 
what we wish to use here. What a commentary on the 
political economy which has been reared on the assump- 
tion of the absolute mobility of labor ! Three or four 
hundred million Chinese suffering the extremity of misery 
at home ; 63,199 Chinese in the United States in 1870, 
and that, after the energetic recruiting of Mr. Koopmans- 

ence of this cause very powerful in preventing emigration from the 
northern and western parts of Scotland, including the Isles, where the 
Gaelic is still spoken. [Report p. 20. cf. 4th Report (1870) on the em 
ployment of women and children in Agr., p. 117.] 

' Miss Martineau notes the jealousy of " imported labor " (from Ire- 
land) during the Napoleonic wars. [Hist England 1. 332.] Even so late 
as 1846, the committee on Railway Laborers reported that not only did 
the Irish and the Scotch not work on the same gangs with the Eng 
lish navvies, but they were kept apart from each other. [Report p. 5.] 
There was especial jealousy manifested toward the Irl«h importations 
[Ibid. p. 52, 77.] 



FAILURE OF EMIGRATION. Vll 

choop and his emigrant-runners! The original struct- 
ure of that mountain, at least, has withstood the effects of 
gravitation with not a little success. Popocatapetl haa 
lost a larger proportion of his bulk, in the last one hun- 
dred years. 

But we may turn to a people less strangely constituted 
and less strongly conserved than the Chinese ; a people 
longer in contact with the western world, and in blood, 
speech and faith far less removed from the nations of 
Europe. The inhabitants of British India have been 
moved even less tlian those of China, by the pressure of 
population, to seek relief in more sparsely settled portions 
of the globe. With the wages of manual labor at 3d. a 
day in good times, and with a scarcity amounting to famine 
on an average once in four or five years, the East Indians 
respect the " original structure " by which they were 
placed on the great Asiatic peninsula, and meet their fate 
where they were born, without thought of change. 
Wages may rise to any height in America and Australia, 
but the people of India are even unconscious of any im- 
pulse to emigration ; and with oriental stoicism and fatalism 
abide in their lot, like the everlasting hills that guard their 
northern frontier. 

Surely we need not seek more such illustrations to 
justify Dr. Whewell's comparison. In these two instances, 
we have seen nearly half the human kind bound in fetters of 
race and speech and religion and caste, of tradition and 
habit and ignorance of the world, of poverty and inepti- 
tude and inertia which practically exclude them from the 
competitions of the world's industry. 

In turning now to consider this matter of the power of 
labor to protect itself, by migration or otherwise, among 
peoples of a higher industrial civilization, we need to pro- 
ceed somewhat more analytically. Let us discuss this 
question under two titles : 

Ist. The migration of laborers from place to place. 



178 THE WAGES QUESTJOJY. 

2d. Change of occupation. 

1st. The migration of labor. Why should laborer! 
need to migrate at all ? Why not stay and work in theit 
lot? Movement involves the expenditure of force: why 
should this waste be incurred ? 

It is the unequal development of population and indus- 
try that marks the beginning of most of the distresses of 
labor. Industry and population must, it is evident, fit 
together throughout the entire extent of both, or loss of 
power and of production will follow, on the one hand ; 
destitution, squalor, and perhaps starvation, on the other. 
Labor will suffer both from not being where it is wanted, 
and from being where it is not wanted. Now in fact, 
there is ever found a liability in population and industry 
to grow apart, even though all conditions appear to re- 
main unchanged ; while no new cause can begin to ope- 
rate in the social or political life of a community, which 
may not very differently affect them. Wherever diver- 
gence appears, there is distress. At times the effect is 
almost instantaneous, when sudden calamities overtake 
the peculiar industries of states and cities. At times the 
effect is wrought as gradually as the ruin of a wall into 
whose seams some slow-maturing vine has thrust its 
fibres, never to be withdrawn till stone is thrown from 
stone. Numberless illustrations might be drawn from 
history and from the statistics of production, of this ten- 
dency to divergence between population and industry;^ 

' The knitting frame caused stocking-making in England to be 
transferred from its former seat at Norwicla. The woolen manufac- 
ture has, within living memory, migrated from Essex and Suffolk to 
the North. Between 1857 and 1861 occurred a falling off in the mus- 
lin embroidery manufacture of Ireland and Scotland, which in- 
volved a reduction in the number of persons employed of 146,000 
(Statistical Journal XXIV. 516.7). About 1846, the English power-looix 
caused the absolute destruction of an industry which supported 250,- 
000 workmen in Flanders. (Ibid, XXVIII, 15.) Seemingly petty 
changes in fashion will often produce wide-reaching effects in produc- 



MO VEMENT8 OF IND U8TB T. 178 

itnd it will be not less interesting to note the incessant 
small vibrations of industry which require an almost daily 
readjustment of population, than to mark the course of 
those great cyclical changes which transfer the seat of 
commercial empire, and leave cities and countries for- 
saken and almost forgotten behind. 

Such being the tendency of industry to occasional or 
periodic movement, the mobility of labor ^ becomes, under 
the theory of competition, an essential condition of its 

tion. Mr. Malthus states that the substitution of shoe ribbons foi 
buckles was a severe blow, long felt by Sheffield and Birmingham 
" On a smaller scale and with less notoriety," says a writer in the Atlie- 
nasuni, " the dismal tragedy of the cotton famine, is enacted every year 
m one or another of our great cities. Every time fashion selects a 
new material for dress, or a new invention supercedes old contri- 
vances, workmen are thrown out of employment." Prof. Rogers gives 
the following piquant illustration of the eifect of changes in the mere 
fashion of dress. "A year or two ago every woman who made any 
pretension to dress according to the custom of the day, surrounded 
herself with a congeries of parallel steel hoops. It is said that fifty 
tons of crinoline wire were turned out weekly from the factories 
chiefly in Yorkshire. The fashion has passed away and the demand 
for the material and the labor has ceased. Thousands of persons once 
engaged in this production are now reduced to enforced idleness, or 
constrained to betake themselves to some other occupation. Again, 
a few years ago, women dressed themselves plentifully with ribbons. 
This fashion has also changed ; where a hundred yards were sold, one 
is hardly purchased now, and the looms of a multitude of silk 
operatives are idle. To quote another instance. At the present time 
women are pleased to walk about bareheaded. The straw-plaiters of 
Bedfordshire, Bucks, Hertfordshire and Essex are reduced suddenly 
from a condition of tolerable prosperity to one of great poverty and 
distress." (Pol. Econ., 1809, pp. 77-8.) 

* But it may be said, if industry abandons population, and wages 
become reduced, this of itself constitutes a reason for industry to return, 
as it will have the advantage of cheap labor. This is much as if one 
should say : the approach of cold induces shivering : shivering is of 
the nature of exercise : exercise induces warmth ; therefore a maq 
may not freeze on a Minnesota prairie in an ice-storm, with the ther- 
mometer at 40 degrees below zero ; and indeed the colder it gets, the 
more he will shake, and consequently, the warmer he will be. 



180 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

well-being. It is of course not necessary that the whok 
body of laborers should be organized like a Tartar tribe, 
packed and saddled ready for flight. The great majority ot 
laborers will never be required to move at all ; but as it 
will always prove that of those who could go, many will 
not, and of those who would go, many cannot, we may 
fairly say that the laboring population is never likely to 
be more completely mobilized by intelligence and the 
possession of property, than is desirable in order to render 
it certain that just the amount of movement from industry 
to industry, and from place to place, which may be required, 
will be effected with the minimum of loss and delay. 
Such being the necessity for the mobility of labor to 
enable it to follow the movements, accountable and 
unaccountable, of industry, it is not needful to go into 
the history of emigration to show that labor has scarce- 
ly, in any country, possessed the readiness and activity 
which answered the requirement. The United States^ 
perhaps afford the highest example of a body of labor pre- 
pared and equipped to seek its best market, wherever that 
market may be ; and Americans, tamiliar with the prompt 
and easy flow of population here, are liable to under-esti- 
mate the difliculties which beset the like movements in 
almost any other country of the world. In part, the activ- 
ity of labor in the United States is due to the generosity 
of nature with us, which allows so large a margin of ex- 
penditure. In still greater measure, it is due to the wide 
diffusion of information through the press and the post- 

1 In 1870, 7,500,000 persons of the native population were living in 
states other than those of their birth. — See Census Reports. " The 
full-blooded American," says Chevalier, " has this in common with 
the Tartar, that he is encamped, not established, on the soil he treads 
upon." — Travels in the United States, p. 129. — In Russia, too, the free- 
dom of migration from place to place, has frequently been noted. 
Sir Arch. Alison attributes this to the Tartar blood. — History of Europe 
XV, 164. — See Sir A. Buchanan's account of the industrial nomads Oi 
Russia. — Reports, H. B. M. Consuls, etc. 1870, p. 301. 



MOVEMENTS OF POPULATION. 181 

office. Perhaps in still greater degree is it due to the 
almost perfect social and political freedom which prevails, 
in the absence of those barriers and restrictions ^ which, to 
the inhabitant of older lands, are as much a matter of 
course as the limitations to his power of reaching objecta 
with his arm. The exceptions to this readiness to follow 
industry in its movements, are found among three classes: 
the newly emancipated slaves of the south, in respect to 
whom no explanation is required, that portion of our 
women who are compelled to enter the general market for 
labor, and, lastly, our foreign population, and among these 
the disability indicated exists mainly among those who 
have been left in our eastern cities by the exhaustion of 
the immigrating force. 

" No one can travel much in the East without seeing 
that, with no small proportion of our vast foreign element, 
occupation is determined by a location that is accidental, 
or practically beyond the control of individuals ; that these 
people are doing what they are doing because they are 
where they are. And the reason for such a wholesale sub- 
jection of labor to its circumstances, is found in the miscel- 
laneousness, the promiscuousness, and we may say the tumul- 
tuousness of the immigration to the United States since the 
days of the Irish famine. Of all who have come to us in the 
past twenty -seven years, by far the greater part have come 
unprovided and uninstructed for the experiences of their 
American life. Whether pushed fairly out of their own 
country by the pressure of population, or escaping from 
military conscription, or moved by restlessness and the spirit 

^ " No cause has, perhaps, more promoted, in every respect, the 
general improvement of the United States than the absence of those 
systems of internal restriction and monopoly, which continue to dis- 
figure the state of society in other countries. No laws exist here 
directly or indirectly confining men to a particular occupation or 
place, or excluding any citizen from any branch he may at any time 
think proper to pursue. Industry is in every respect free and unfet 
tered." — Albert Gallatin. 



183 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

of adventure, or burning with the gold fever, or alhired 
by the false reports of relatives and acquaintances on this 
side the water, they have fallen on our shores, the immi- 
gratory impulse exhausted, thtir money gone, with no 
definite purpose, with no special preparation, to become 
the victims of their j)lace and circumstances. There is a 
tendency at every harbor which lies at the debouche of a 
river, to the formation of a bar composed of mud and 
sand brought down by the current which yet has not the 
force to scour its channel clear out to deep M'ater. And 
in much the same way, there is a tendency at every port 
of immigration to the accumulation, from the failure of the 
immigrating force, of large deposits of more or less help- 
less labor which a little assistance from government would 
serve to carry far inland, and distribute widely, to the 
best advantage at once of the immigrants and of the indus- 
try of the country. 

" Of those foreigners whose occupations have deter 
mined their location, the most notable instances are the 
Welsh and the Scandinavians. 

" Why should there be four times as many Welsh in 
Pennsylvania as in New York: Why four times as many 
in Ohio as in Illinois ? The reason is obvious : the 
Welsh are famous iron miners and iron makers. They 
have come out to this country under intelligent direction, 
and have gone straight to the place where they .were 
wanted. Quite as striking has been the self-direction of 
the Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. Four states, all 
west of Lake Michigan, contain ninetj'-four per cent of all 
the Norwegians in the country and sixty-six per cent of 
the Swedes. It is probably not owing so much to superior 
foresight or to ampler means that the British Americana 
" in the States " have, as it would appear, located them- 
selves according to their industrial preferences, as to the 
fact of their original proximity and the advantages the}? 
found in this for obtaining information, for easily reaching 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 18S 

the place of their choice, and for easilj^ recovering them 

selves in case of mistake Of all our foreio:n 

elements, the Irish is that which would seem, from a study 
of their occupations, to have been most subject to circum- 
stances. The conditions of the forced and most painful 
emigration from Ireland must be held to account amply 
for this." 1 

With exception, then, of the three classes named, there 
has been, in the fortunate state of freedom from social and 
legal restraints, in the great generosity of nature on oui 
behalf, and in the general intelligence of our population^ 
if not that perfect competition which the economists 
assume in their reasonings, at least a very active resort of 
labor to market. Our advantages in this respect are, how- 
ever, highly exceptional. In general it is found as Adam 
Smith has expressed it, that ''of all sorts of luggage, man 
is the most difficult to be transported." 

Mr. Frederick Harrison ^ has thus set forth this diffi- 
culty of moving labor to its market : 

" In most cases, the seller of a commodity can send it 
or carry it about from place to place, and market to mar- 
ket, with perfect ease. He need not be on the spot ; he 
generally can send a sample ; he usually treats by corre- 
spondence. A merchant sits in his counting house, and 
by a few letters or forms, transports and distributes the sub- 
sistence of a whole city from continent to continent. In 
other cases, as the shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of pass- 
ing multitudes, supplies the want of locomotion in his 
wares. His customers supply the locomotion for him. 
This is a true market. Here competition acts rapidly, 

1 The Advance, Dec. 10, 1874. In the last century tlie Irish emigra- 
tion was from an altogether different class. " The spirit of emigration 
in Ireland," said Arthur Young in 1777, " appears to be confined xo twt 
circumstances, the Presbyterian religion and the linen manufacture.' 
— Pinkerton, iii. 868. 

* Fortnightly Review, III. 50. 



184 THE WAGES qUBSTlOm 

fully, simply, fairly. It is totally otherwise with a da_y 
laborer, wlio has no commodity to sell. He must himself 
be present at every market, which means costly, persona' 
locomotion. He cannot correspond with his employer ; 
he cannot send a sample of his strength ; nor do employ- 
ers knock at his cottage door." 

Of the freedom of movement among the states of 
Europe, we get an approximate measure from the follow- 
ing Census Statistics, ^ which are about twenty-six years 
old. Switzerland, a small country bordering three great 
nations, and having the languages of all three spoken as 
native tongues in her own limits, contains the largest pro- 
portion of foreigners to total popidation, viz., 2.99 per 
cent. Holland comes next of those on our list, with 2.32 
per cent ; Belgium next with 1.76 ; France with 1.06 ; 
Denmark with 0.93 ; the United Kingdom last, with 0.27 
per cent. 

But the statistics of international migration afford a very 
inadequate and often a very deceptive notion as to those 
quick and apt movements of population which anticipate in- 
dustrial distress and prevent the breaking down of the labor 
market, with all its consequences in the degradation of the 
w^orking classes. To move from one county to another, 
or even only from one parish to another, would cost incom- 
parably less than to move across the sea, and would often 
be quite as effectual. And here the systematic writers in 
economics commonly assume the complete mobility of 
labor. 2 Yet we find that the impulse which is sufficient 
to send laborers from England to Australia, is not always 
sufficient to send them from Devon to Durham. Prof. 
Senior, in one of his illustrations, supposed that, in case of 

• Statistical Journal, xx. 1^. 

" " The assumption commonly made in treatises of political econ- 
omy, is that, as between occupations and localities within the same 
country, the freedom of movement of capital and labor is perfect." [J 
E. Cairnes, " Some Leading Principles," etc., p. 362.] 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 185 

a local failure of employment, laborers would follow theii 
landlord from Leicestershire to London, but not from Lon- 
don to Paris. In real life, however, the difficulty of mi- 
gration is not so graded. Thus Mr. Chadwick cites 
instances ^ of laborers in the south and southwest of Eng- 
land, who had heard of America, but had not heard of 
Lancashire, and could not be persuaded to go there, on 
offer of favorable employment. ^ Mr. Muggeridge bears 
quite as explicit testimony in his evidence before the com 
mittee of 1855. 

" The workman never goes out of his village, and is as 
ignorant as a cart-horse of what is going on elsewhere, 
even in his own county. I found on going into the Korth 
of England, that there was a demand everywhere for 
laborers ; but when I got to the South and West of England 
I heard general complaints of the superabundance of the 
laboring population, and consequently of high poor rates. 
I then suggested to the government a plan for removing, 
with their own consent, the unemployed portion of the 
population. I think that, altogether, something like 
17,000 persons who were paupers and wholly out of em- 
ployment in the South and West of England were, in the 
North of England put into most lucrative employment." 

Q. " At the time to which you refer, there was, I 
presume, a great demand for labor in the North of Eng- 
land ? " 

A. " There was ; but I do not think that the people in 
the South and West of England ever heard of it. I carried 
the news of it into Suffolk and Norfolk also. They knew 

• Statistical Journal, xxviii. p. 13. 

' A part of tliis effect, viz., the preference of emigration from the 
kingdom over migration within the kingdom, is due to the ineffable 
stupidity of the act of 12 and 13 Victoria (c. 103) which enables guar- 
dians of the poor to borrow money to send laborers out of the country ; 
but does not authorize them to spend a penny in sending a person from 
the parish of his residence to another part of the kingdom where em 
ploynient may be freely offered. 



186 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

no more of it there, than they did of what might be going 
on in North America." ^ 

This immobility of labor has of course powerfully 
afiected wages. A century ago Adam Smith wrote :^ 
" The wages of labor in a great town and its neighborhood 
are frequently a fourth or a fifth part — twenty or twenty 
five per cent — higher than at a few miles distance. Eigh- 
teen pence a day may be reckoned the common price of 
labor in London and its neighborhood. At a few miles 
distance, it falls to fourteen and fifteen pence. Ten pence 
may be reckoned its price in Edinburgh and its neighbor- 
hood. At a few miles distance it falls to eight pence, the 
usual price of common labor through the greater part of 
the low country of Scotland, where it varies a good deal 
less than in England. Such a diffei'ence of prices which 
it seems is not always sufficient to transport a man from 
one parish to another, would necessarily occasion so great 
a transportation of the most hulhy commodities, not only 
from one point to another, hut from one end of the king- 
dom, almost from one end of the world, to another, as would 
soon reduce them more nearly to a level.''' ^ 

One might suppose that the vast increase in the facilities 
for transportation of freight and passengers, and for the 
diffusion of information through the post-oflace and the 
printing-press, would have gone far in this century to 
remove the obstruction which then retarded the flow of 

1 Report, on the Stoppage of Wages, p. 172. 

^ Wealth of Nations, I. 79. 

' In discussing his extremely valuable Returns before the Statistical 
Society, Mr. Purdy says : " It would appear that no commodity in this 
country presents so great a variation in price at one time, as agricul- 
tural labor, taking the money wages of the men as the best exponent of 
its value. A laborer's wages in Dorset or Devon are barely half th« 
sum given for similar services in the Northern parts of England." — 
Statistical Journal, xsiv. 344. Mr. Purdy refers, as among the causes ot 
this, " to the natural vis inertiae of the class. . . . and above all, 
a well founded dread of the miseries of a disputed poor-law settlemen< 
in the hour of their destitution." 



TEE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 187 

labor to its market; ' but the force of ignorance, timiditj 
and superstition is not so easily broken. Prof. Fawcett 
writes : " During the winter months, an ordinary agricul- 
tural laborer in Yorkshire earns thirteen shillings a week. 
The wages of a Wiltshire or Dorsetshire laborer, doing 
the same kind of work, and working a similar number ol 
hours, are only nine shillings a week. This great differ- 
ence in wages is not counterbalanced by other considera- 
tions; living is not more expensive in Yorkshire than in 
Dorsetshire, and the Dorsetshire laborer does not enjoy any 
particular advantages or privileges which are denied to 
the Yorkshire laborer." " 

' Professor Rogers, in his History of Agriculture and Prices, ex- 
presses the opinion that not only the transport of freight, but the tran- 
sit of persons, was as free in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth, 
as in the eighteenth century. The roads were maintained in good 
order, chiefly by the monasteries, and travelling was then professional 
in many trades. The tiler, the slater, the mason, and the finer carpenter 
ivfh.0 made furniture) were migratory. [Hist. I. 234-5 ]. Of a period a 
little later. Prof. Rogers says, "Labor travelled in those days (1530- 
1620) as freely as now ; indeed, in the account books of Elizabeth, we 
find that mechanics for Greenwich and the Tower are procured from 
places as distant as Cardiff, Dorchester, Brighton, Bristol and Bridge- 
water." — [Statistical Journal, xxiv. 548.] 

The practice of travelling or " wandering " as it is called, which has 
come down from this period, still prevails extensively in Germany 
among the younger journeymen (" Herbergen") — see Mr. Petre's report 
on the condition of the industrial classes, 1870, p. 56. The ease with 
which the German artisans are " metamorphosed into Frenchmen, 
Englishmen, Italians, Americans or Turks" (Mr. Strachey, Ibid p. 507) 
has doubtless contributed to the freedom of their movement. Not 
less than 8,000 German workmen were reported at Mulhouse before 
the war of 1870. 

Consul Wilkinson reports that the settled population of the province 
of Macedonia is augmented in winter by five or six thousand itiner- 
ant artisans who quit their native mountains in central Albania, and 
distribute themselves over the province in quest of employment, [ibid 
p. 248]. M. Ducarre's report to the French assembly of 1875, notes the 
considerable proportions of the annual migration from Italy into Cor 
sica. [p. 247.] 

«Pol. Econ. p. 167. 



188 THE WAGES QUESTIOW. 

But while, in modification of the aKSumption of the 
complete mobility of population under economical im- 
pulses, we find such great and permanent differences 
in the remuneration of labor in neighboring districts, if 
we look to the condition of the lowest order of laborers in 
many European countries, we shall see reason not to 
assert many and large exceptions to the rule of mobility, 
but to deny the validity of the rule altogether. If we 
consider the population of the more squalid sections of 
any city, we can only conclude that, contrary to the 
assumption of the economists, the more miserable men are, 
the less and not the more likely they are to seek and find a 
better place in society and industry. Their poverty, 
their ignorance, their superstitious fears and, perhaps 
more than all, the apathy that comes with a broken 
spirit, bind them in their place and to their fate. To 
apply to human beings in their condition, maxims derived 
from the contemplation of the Economic Man, is little 
less than preposterous. Such populations do not migrate ; 
they abide in their lot; sinking lower in helplessness, 
hopelessness and squalor; economic forces have not the 
slightest virtue either to give them higher wages, or to 
make them deserving of higher wages. 



2d. I have spoken of change of location as a means of 
restoring the due relations of population and industry 
which have, as has been shown, an incessant tendency 
to grow apart. Let us now consider the change of occu- 
pation, within the same locality, as a second means to 
that end. Not only may the industry of different places 
or sections develop with great irregularity relatively to 
their respective populations ; but in any place or section 
the proportions borne by the several branches of industry 
are liable to frequent and extensive alterations, from the 
effects of changing fashions, from the exhaustion of the 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 189 

materials which have formed the basis of production, 
from the invention or discovery of substitutes, or from the 
growth of other habits of living in the community. In- 
deed, as between the two great divisions, agriculture 
and manufactures, there is not only a constant tendency 
to change, but there is the highest improbability of the 
proportions long remaining the same, the reason being the 
more rapid and extensive introduction of machinery, and 
the more minute subdivision of work in the latter than in 
the former department. 

Again, as between any two mechanical pursuits, the 
demand for labor is likely to be differently affected by 
change of fashion, by the application of new arts and 
the discovery of new resources. Thus, to consider a 
single cause, the productive power of a hundred hands 
engaged in the manufacture of boots and shoes was in- 
creased thirty per cent by the introduction of special 
machinery between 1860 and 18Y0. This is by no means 
an extreme example. The wholesale discharges of 
laborers from employment in the textile manufactures 
during the last quarter of the last century and the first 
quarter of the present, as the result of the successive inven- 
tions and improvements of machinery, required a readjust- 
ment of population to industry which amounted almost 
to a continuous revolution. In a greater or less degree, 
the need of such readjustment is constantly pressing upon 
labor, and if it fails to be effected or is effected partially 
and tardily, there will be a loss to labor, a two-fold loss, 
first, in that the laboring class will miss, in wliole or part, 
the advantages of the opening employment, and second, 
in that the body of laborers remaining in the crowded 
occupations will trample each other down in their in- 
dividual eagerness to obtain work and wages, with all the 
consequences in the degradation of labor, which have been 
depicted in Chap. IV. 

A similar result may be brought about by changes in 



i90 TEE WAGES QUESTTOIT. 

the comparative demand for the products of the severa 
branches of manufactures. These changes are literally in 
cessant, sometimes amounting only to a temporary quick- 
ening of production in some, and corresponding dullness 
in other departments: sometimes amounting to the slow 
decay or even to the sudden destruction of industries 
which have engaged large bodies of workmen. In in- 
stances of the former sort, the laborers concerned in depart- 
ments which suffer depression, simply hold on, in expecta- 
tion of returning demand and reviving business ; while if 
certain branches of manufactures are peculiarly liable to 
such disturbances, that fact comes to be reckoned among 
the considerations' which determine the real, as contrasted 
with the nominal rate of wages therein. 

But not infrequently such change of demand exhibits a 
persistency which brings to the body of laborers tradition- 
ally engaged in these industries the choice of encountering 
a general failure of employment, bringing them sooner or 
later to the condition of hopeless pauperism, or of seeking 
in some other department of industry, perhaps in some 
other land, the means of supporting themselves and their 
families. 

But while the irregular growth of different branches 
of industry would thus require a frequent readjustment of 
labor, if we assumed an equable growth of the populations 
which furnish the natural supply of such branches of indus- 
tr}^ severally, there is the possibility of a further and more 
urgent need of a readjustment arising out of the irregular 
growth of the latter. 

By the population which furnishes the natural supply 
of labor in each branch of industry, I mean, simply, the 
offspring of families engaged therein. It will not be ques- 
tioned that there is at least a strong tendency within each 
trade to supply its own labor by its own increase. That 
tendency may, according to circumstances and character, 

' Seep. 26, 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOB. 1% 

be slight, or it may be very strong, or almost irresistible 
It differs from some of the asserted tendencies on which 
we have had occasion to comment, in that it is a real and 
not an ideal tendency *, al the weaknesses of human nature 
minister to make it powerful and effective. JSTow, there 
being an admitted disposition of children to settle down 
in their parents' occupation, the need of a readjustment of 
labor, which can only be effected through positive efforts 
and sacrifices, becomes greater on account of the irregular- 
ity in the natural increase of population within the dif 
ferent branches of industry, which is wholly additional to 
the irregularity in the growth of those branches them- 
selves, viewed as furnishing employment to laborers. The 
rate of effective increase varies greatly within each such 
natural population, through differences both in the aver- 
age number of children to a family and in the proportion 
of children who survive infancy/ In agriculture, for 
instance, the social and vital conditions of the occupation 
encourage births, while pure air and food give the chil- 
dren born on the farm a better chance of life. On the 
other hand, in some occupations, domestic increase is 
almost practically forbidden. Occupations range all the 
way between these extremes, in this respect of their nat- 
ural supply of labor. Thus the census of Scotland, 1871, 
shows that there are 177 dependents to 100 bread-win- 

^ It is not merely by differences in the birth-rate and in the death- 
rate of these natural labor-populations, that the supply of labor ia 
made to vary. The census of Scotland quoted above, shows that the 
■proportion of males born varies greatly in the different occupations. 
Thus, among the workers in chemicals there are but 85.2 males to IOC 
female children under five years of age ; among operatives in silk 
factories, there are 93.9, in cotton-factories, 95.3, in woolen factories 
97.8 ; while among the agricultural population there are 105.2, among 
fishermen, 107.5, among general out-door laborers, 106.6, among quarry- 
men and brickmakers, 107.8, and among railway laborers and navvies, 
117.1. See Report, p. 44. Of course the greater the jroportional 
number of males, the greater the supply of effective labor. 



192 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ners within the agricultural class, whi^e there are but 129 
dependents to 100 bread-winners within the manufactuB- 
ing class.^ Doubtless, some portion of this relative defi- 
ciency in the manufacturing class is due to the larger oppor 
tiinitj for the employment of children productively in 
mechanical industry ; but doubtless, also, a considerable 
remainder testifies to the superior fecundity of the agricul- 
tural population, and the greater vitality of children bred 
in the country. 

Such being the occasion for a frequent readjustment of 
population within the several occupations, arising from 
great irregularity of growth in both population and indus- 
try, how far is labor able to respond to such economical 
necessities ? 

Adam Smith's treatment of this subject constitutes one 
of the most extraordinary phenomena of economical lite- 
rature. No man has dwelt more strongly than he on the 
difficulties which embarrass and delay the movement of 
laborers from place to place. It is his own phrase that 
man is "of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be 
transported.'* He saw in his own little island the wages 
of common, unskilled laborers ranging from eighteen pence 
to eight pence a day, while in the islands, just a bit smaller, 
to the west, he saw them lower by from twenty to forty 
per cent; he saw " a few miles distance," make a difference 
in the remuneration of the same sort of labor of " a fourth 
or a fifth part ; " he knew that such differences had existed 
for generations without any adequate movement of labor, 
new causes continually creating divergence faster than 
population could close up the intervals ; and he exclaimed 
that a difference of prices which proved insufficient to 
earry a man to the next parish would be enough to carry 
the most bulky commodities "from one end of the king- 
dom, almost from one end of the world, to the other." 

• Report, p. 43. 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 193 

Yet the same philosopher, a few pages on, treats the dif- 
ferences which appear in the remuneration of the different 
occupations as either imaginarj'- or else transient. It is 
thus he writes : " The whole of the advantages and disad- 
vantages of the different employments of labor and stock 
must, in the same neighborhood, be either perfectly equal 
or continually tending to equality. If in the same neigh- 
borhood there was any employment evidently either more 
or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would 
crowd into it, in the one case, and so many would desert it, 
in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the 
level of other employments. This, at least, would be the 
case in a society where things were left to follow their 
natural course."^ 

It would almost seem as though Dr. Smith deemed the 
obstacles which beset the movement of laborers from place 
to place, to be physical merely, and, since no physical 
difficulties stand in the way of a change of occupation by 
the laborer while remaining in the same place, he saw no 
important, no note- worthy, obstacles to the free movement 
of labor from employment to employment. But if the 
obstacles which beset migration were physical merely, man, 
instead of being " of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult 
to be transported," would, with his own consent, be the 
easiest to be transported. It is because the difficulties 
which beset migration are, after all, mainly moral, that 
the statement quoted above is true. 

Economists writing since Adam Smith's time have gen- 
erally followed his lead in regarding the obstacles which 
hinder the movement of laborers within the several 
branches of industry as of little or no account. Some 
exceptions appear, but as Prof. Cairnes remarks, it is 
commonly assumed in treatises of political economy that 
between occupations, as between localities, in the same 

» Wealth of Nations i, pp. 103-4. 



194 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

country, the freedom of movement, for labor or for capi- 
tal, is perfect.' In 1874, however, that eminent economist 
brought forward his theory of " Non-Competing Groiips " 
in industry, a contribution of so much importance that I 
insert his statement substantially entire. The form of 
Prof. Cairnes' opening is due to the fact that he is reply- 
ing to a " school of reasoners" of whom Mr. F. D. Longe 
was, we may assume, the individual most conspicuously 
in his view at the time, who hold the movement of labor as 
between occupations to be practically nil. 

" Granted, that labor once engaged in a particular occu- 
pation is practically committed to that species of occupa- 
tion, all labor is not thus engaged and committed. A 
young generation is constantly coming forward, whose 
capabilities may be regarded as still in disposable form. 
. . . The young persons composing this body, or others 
interested in their welfare, are eagerly watching the pros- 
pects of industry in its several branches, and will not be 
slow to turn toward the pursuits that promise the largest 
rewards. . . . On the other hand, while fresh labor is 
coming on the scene, worn-out labor is passing oflF; 
and the departments of industry in which remunera- 
tion has from any cause fallen below the average level, 
ceasing to be recruited, the numbers of those employed 
in them will quickly decline, until supply is brought 
within the limits of demand, and remuneration is restored 
to its just proportions. In this way, then, in the case of 
labor as in that of capital, the conditions for an effective 
competition exist, notwithstanding the practical diificulties 
in the way of transferring labor, once trained to a particu- 
lar occupation, to new pursuits. But as I have already in- 
timated, the conditions are^ in this case, realized only in cm 
imperfect manner. . . Each individual lahorer can only 
choose his employment within certain tolerahly well-dejlnea 
limits. These limits are the limits set by the qualifica- 

' Some Leading Principles, etc., p. 362. 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 195 

tions required for each branch of trade, and the amount of 
preparation necessary for their acquisition. Take an indi- 
vidual workman whose occupation is still undetermined, 
he will, according to circumstances, have a narrower or 
wider field of choice; but in no case will this be co-exten- 
sive with the entire range of domestic industry. If he 
belongs to the class of agricultural laborers, all forms of 
mere unskilled labor are open to him^ but beyond this he 
is practically shut out from competition. The barrier is 
hir, social position and circumstances which render his 
education defective, while his means are too narrow to 
allow of his repairing the defect, or of deferring the return 
upon his industry, till he has qualified himself for a skilled 
occupation. Mounting a step higher in the industrial 
scale — to the artisan class, including with them the class 
of small dealers whose pecuniary position is much upon a 
par with artisans — here also within certain limits there is 
complete freedom of choice ; but beyond a certain range, 
practical exclusion. The man who is brought up to be 
an ordinary carpenter, mason, or smith, may go to any of 
these callings, or a hundred more, according as his taste 
prompts, or the prospect of remuneration attracts him ; 
but practically he has no power to compete in those higher 
departments of skilled labor for which a more elaborate 
education and larger training are necessary, for example, 
mechanical engineering. Ascend a step higher still, and 
we find ourselves again in the presence of similar limita- 
tions ; we encounter persons competent to take part in any 
of the higher skilled industries, but practically excluded 
from the professions. 

" It is true indeed that in none of these cases is the 
exclusion absolute. The limits imposed are not such as 
may not be overcome by extraordinary energy, self-denial 
and enterprise ; ' and by virtue of these qualities indi - 

' " The founder of the cotton manufacture was a barber. The inven 
tor of the power loom was a clergyman. A farmer devised the appli 



196 THE WA0E8 QUESTION. 

viduals in all classes are escaping every day from the 
bounds of their original position and forcing their way 
into the ranks of those who stand above them. All thic 
is no doubt true. But such exceptional phenomena do 
not afiect the substantial truth of our position. What we 
find, i7i effect is, not a whole jpopulation competing indis- 
criminately for all occupations, hut a series of industrial 
layers superimposed on one another, within each of which 
the various candidates for employment possess a real and 
effective power of selection, while those occupying the 
several strata are, for all purposes of effective competition, 
practically isolated from each others 

The consequences economically of this practical isola- 
tion of large industrial groups, must, on the first state- 
ment, strike the mind of the reader as very important and 
far-reaching. If this isolation exists, then there is not a 
tendency, through the operation of economical causes 
alone, to the equalization primarily of wages throughout 
the several groups : and, derivatively, of the prices of the 
corresponding products of such groups. Prof. Oairnea 
does not flinch from carrying his theory to its proper con- 
sequences. Citing Mr. John S. Mill's law of Internationa] 
Values,^ he declares that this doctrine is manifestly appli- 
cation of the screw-propeller. A fancy -goods shopkeeper is one of the 
most enterprising experimentalists in agriculture. The most remark- 
able architectural design of our day has been furnished by a gardener. 
The first person who supplied London with water was a goldsmith. 
The first extensive maker of English roads was a blind man, bred to 
no trade. The father of English inland navigation was a duke, and 
his engineer was a millwright. The first great builder of iron bridges 
was a stone mason, and the greatest railway engineer commenced hia 
life as a colliery engineer." — Hearn's Plutology, p. 279. 

' Some Leading Principles, etc., pp. 70-3. 

' " That doctrine may be thus briefly stated : International values are 
governed by the reciprocal demand of commercial countries for each 
other's productions, or more precisely, by the demand of each country 
for the productions of all other countries as against the demand of all 
other countries for what it produces. . . Whatever be the excJiang 



TEE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 197 

cable to all cases in which groups of producers, excl nded 
from reciprocal industrial competition, exchange their 
products. Such cases, as I have shown, occur in domesti*. 
trade, in the exchanges between those non-competing in- 
dustrial groups of which I have spoken." As applied to 
such groups, the law formulated by Mr. Mill would leave 
the average relative level of prices within each group to 
be determined by the reciprocal demand of the groups ; 
or, to abandon technical language, we have the result ot 
large groups, each of which is left to meet its industrial 
fate by itself, without sharing in the advantages of other 
groups, or contributing to their welfare out of its own 
abundance ; a condition in which it can no longer be 
claimed that if one group be exceptionally prosperous, 
labor will flow into it from the outside, till the rate of 
wages therein is reduced to an assumed general average, 
and vice versa. What then, becomes of the Economic 
Harmonies, and of the assumption that the " Laws of 
Trade '' only need to be left to their unimpeded operation to 
bring out the best good of the whole industrial community ? 
Is this doctrine, bringing with it such vast consequences, 
true ? I answer, there is, in my judgment, a great deal of 
truth in it, otherwise I should not be justified in having 
introduced it at such length ; but that it will be finally ac- 
cepted in the form in which Prof. Cairnes left it, I do not 
believe, though it is not unlikely that his statement, over- 
strained as it is, will compel the attention of economists to 
considerations of real importance heretofore overlooked, 
or avoided on account of their difficulty, more effectually 
even than a more measured statement would have done. 
Certainly after so emphatic an utterance, by an economist 

iag proportions — or, let us say, wliatever be the state of relative prices 
— in different countries, which is requisite to secure this result, those 
exchanging proportions, that state of relative prices, will become 
normal — will furnish the central point toward which the fluctuations 
of international prices will gravitate." — "Some Leading Principles 
etc." pp. 99, 100. 



.98 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

BO distinguished, writers in economics can hardiy continue 
to assume a perfect freedom of movement on the part 
of labor, as between localities and occupations within any 
country, an assumption as mischievous as it is false. 

Instead of asserting, as Prof. Cairnes has done, the prao 
tical isolation of certain great groups, with entire freedom 
of movement within these groups, I believe that a fuller 
study of industrial society will establish the conviction 
that nowhere is mobility perfect, theoretically or even 
practicality, and nowhere is there entire immobilitj' of 
labor ; that all classes and conditions of men are apprecia- 
bly affected by the force of competition ; but that, on the 
other hand, the force of competition, which nowhere be- 
comes nil, even for practical purposes, ranges from a very 
high to a very low degree of efficiency, according to 
national temperament, according to peculiarities of per- 
sonal character and circumstance, according to the laws 
and institutions of the community, and according to natu- 
ral or geographical influences. 

And first, briefly, of the assumed isolation of certain 
great groups, as of skilled or unskilled labor. Here Prof. 
Cairnes asserts that not only will adult laborers, once 
engaged in unskilled occupations, not go up into skilled 
occupations in any appreciable numbers ; but that the 
transfer will not take place in the next generation, by the 
passing of the children of unskilled laborers into skilled 
occupations, to an extent which will practically afliect, in 
any appreciable degree, the numbers of the class into 
which or out of which, such children, if any, shall go. 

It cannot be denied that there is a strong constraint, 
made up of both moral and physical forces, which keeps 
the vast majority of children not only within the great in- 
dustrial group into which they were born, but even with- 
in the very trades which their fathers individually pursue 
I shall have occasion hereafter to dwell on this as of great 
importance in the philosophy of wages. But that this 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 199 

constraint is so powerful and unrendtting that those who 
escape are so few as not in any appreciable degree tc re- 
lieve the class which they leave or to influence the class 
into which they thus enter, I must doubt. It is not so in 
the United States, in Canada, in Australia. I seriously 
doubt whether it is so in Germany, with its universal pri- 
mary instruction for the young and its admirable system 
of technical education. It surely is not so in Scotland. 

If Prof. Cairn es' generalization remains sound for his 
own country, it is still true that the humblest English 
laborer has only to emigrate to the United States, as tens 
of thousands do every year, in order to place his children 
in a situation where they can pass into a higher industrial 
group, not by the display of " extraordinary energy, self- 
denial and enterprise," but by the exercise of ordinary 
social and industrial virtues. 

On the other hand, how is it with the assumed free- 
dom of movement within the industrial groups which 
Prof. Cairnes has in view ? Let us recur to his own state- 
ment of the case. He does not claim that laborers who 
have once become engaged in any occupation are practi- 
cally free to leave it for any other which may seem more 
remunerative. He admits, perhaps too fully if we have 
regard to the United States, Canada, and Australia, that 
the mass of laborers are held in their place and lot by a 
constraint from which it is practically beyond their power 
to escape. But he does claim that the rising generation 
of laborers furnishes a disposable force — a disposable fund, 
he terms it — which can be and will be directed freely 
within the great groups he defines, according "as remu- 
neration may tempt, in various directions. The young 
persons composing this body, or others interested in their 
■welfare, are eagerly watching the prospects of industry in 
its several branches, and will not be slow to turn towards 
the pursuits that promise the largest rewards."^ 
• Some Leading Principles, etc., p. 69. 



200 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Now let it for the moment be granted that Prof. Caimes' 
proposition is true to the full extent, how far does the 
mobility thus given to labor answer the requirements of 
the case ? Reference to tables of vital statistics will show 
that the number of persons annually arriving at the age of 
twenty is from two and a half to three per cent of the 
population twenty years of age and upwards. This then is 
the extent of this "disposable fund." Now in Chap. IV. 
we have sought to show how serious often is the evil effect 
upon those elements of character which go to make up the 
efficienc}' of labor, of even a brief failure of employment ; 
how almost certainly extensive mischief results from 
"hard times" protracted through months and years; 
how easily and quickly harm is done ; how slowly and 
painfully industrial character is built up again. In view 
of such possibilities of disaster, always imminent from the 
very nature of modern industry, the question becomes one 
of great importance, whether this " disposable fund," 
which Prof. Cairnes adduces, is large enough for its 
purpose, whether it secures the needed mobility of labor. 
But before hnally answering this inquiry, let us ask 
whether Prof. Cairnes is justified hy the facts in assuming 
that the wliole of the rising generation of laborers is thus 
disposable, " fulifilling the same function in relation to the 
general labor force of the country which capital, while 
yet existing as purchasing power, discharges in its rela- 
tion to its general capital ? " 

One would not lightly speak in terms of ridicule of any- 
thing which Prof. Cairnes has written ; yet there is some- 
thing ludicrous in the picture which his words suggest of 
a weaver, with half a dozen children and fifteen shillings a 
week, earnestly pondering the question, to which of the 
various trades of the group to which he belongs he shall 
devote the opening talents of his nine-year-old boy, now 
just able to earn three-pence a day in the mill ; or of pro- 
tracted and frequently adjourned family councils in which 



TEE MOBILITY OF LABOR 201 

poor Hodge, his wife and eldest dangliter, discuss the indus- 
trial capabilities of the younger members of the family, and 
the comparative inducements of the several hundred manual 
occupations recognized in the tables of the census. The 
picture is ludicrous only because the truth of the case is so 
pitifully the other way. We know that mill owners are 
harassed with applications from their hands to take chil- 
dren into employment on almost any terms, and that the 
consciences of employers have required to be rein- 
forced by the sternest prohibitions and penalties of the law 
to save children ten, seven, or four years old, from the 
horrors of " sweating dens " and crowded factories, since 
the more miserable the parents' condition, the greater 
becomes the pressure on them to crowd their children 
somehow, somewhere, into service; the scantier the re- 
muneration of their present employment, the less becomes 
their ability to secure promising openings, or to obtain 
favor from outside for the better disposition of their off- 
spring. Once in the mill, we know how little chance there 
is of the children afterwards taking up for themselves an- 
other way of life. 

We know, too, that in the agricultural districts of Eng- 
land, gangs of children of all ages, from sixteen down to 
ten or even five years, have been formed, and driven from 
farm to farm, and from parish to parish, to work all day 
under strange overseers, and to sleep at night in barns 
huddled all together, without distinction of sex. We 
know that the system of public gangs required an act of 
parliament ten years ago, to break it up, and we have the 
testimony of the commissioners of 1867, that, in spite of 
the law, it is still continued in some parts of the king- 
dom ; while the system of private gangs,' only less shock- 

' " Eveu sometimes as many as eighty or one hundred may be taken 
from a neighboring town to one farm." Report of E. B. Portman, asst, 
comm'r., — Employment of women and children, 1867-8, p. 95. " A1 
present, parents solicit employers to take children into service ofter 



803 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ing to contemplate, is still continued without rebuke oi 
law. Surely, such facts as these are not consistent with 
the assumption that the comparative merits of a large 
number of occupations constituting a " competing group " 
are carefully and intelligently canvassed by parents, anx- 
ious for the highest ultimate good of their offspring, and 
willing and able to take advantage of opportunities afforded 
in branches of industry strange to them and perhaps pros- 
ecuted at a distance. So late as 1870, children were 
employed in the brickyards of England, under strange task- 
masters, at three and a half years of age.^ Account is 
given us, sickening in its details, of a boy weighing 
fifty-two pounds, carrjdng on his head a load of clay 
weighing forty-three pounds, seven miles a day, and walk 
ing another seven to the place where his burden was to 
be assumed. Perhaps his mother was eagerly "watching 
the prospects of industry in its several branches," with a 
view to selecting a thoroughly agreeable, remunerative, 
and at the same time improving occupation, where he 
could at once earn a handsome living and secure oppor- 
tunities for the harmonious development of his physical, 
intellectual and spiritual faculties, but I scarcely think it. 
John Allinsworth tells Mr. White, Asst. Commissioner, 
how he and his son, aged nine years, earn their daily 
bread. " "Work in the furnace. Last Saturday morning 
we began at two. We had slept in the furnace, being 
strangers to the town. We live at Wadsley, four or five 
miles off. We have to be here hy six a. m. It is a long 
way for the boy to come and go back each day, though I 
can manage it. I should like to get someplace in the town 
for him to stay in."^ Now there is a father who is looking 

BO young as to be worthless. " — Ibid. p. 97. " In Cambridgeshire, the 
children go out to work as young as six years old, many at seven oi 
eight." — Ibid, p. 95. cf. pp. 12, 15, note. 

' Social Science Transactions, 1874, p. 4. 

« Report of 1865, p. 13. 



THE MOBILITY OF LABOR. 203 

ont for his son, according to Prof. Cairnes' assumption ] 
yet Mr. Commissioner White would probably, from his 
large experience, give heavy odds that John Allinsworth'a 
little son, aged nine, will be found twenty years from this, 
if still alive, working in the furnace, perhaps sleeping in it, 
stunted and blighted, the father of a nine-years-old boy, 
for whom he too, " would like " to get a better place to 
work and sleep. 

I have not called up such pictures of human misery with 
the object of exciting compassion, much less with a view to 
obtain an advantage in controversy, but to show graphically 
the error of Prof. Cairnes' assumption that parents who are 
tied down hopelessly to an occupation which affords but 
the barest subsistence can freely dispose of their children 
to the best advantage among a large class of occupations. 
Especially when we consider that, in the development of 
modern industry, trades become highly localized, entire 
towns and cities being given up to a single branch of 
manufacture, shall we see the practical fallacy of this 
assumption. Even if we suppose the parent to be advised 
of better opportunities for employment opening in some 
trade prosecuted at a distance, and to be pecuniarily able 
to send his child thither and secure him a position, yet, 
years before the boy or girl would be fit to send away from 
home, the chance of earning a few pence in the mill where 
the parent works would almost irresistibly have drawn the 
child into the vortex. 

May we not then question Prof. Cairnes' assumption that 
the children of the working classes constitute " a disposa- 
ble fund " to be distributed to the highest advantage of 
labor among those occupations which at the time are most 
remunerative ? The truth is, that until you secure mobility 
to adult labor you will fail to find it in the rising generor 
tion^ and that among an ignorant and degraded population 
four-fifths, perhaps nine-tenths, of all children, by what 
may be called a moral necessity, follow the occupations of 



804 THE WAGES QUESTIOF. 

their parents, or those with whom their fortune h^s placed 
them. The great exception is that which Prof. Fawcett 
has indicated,^ that of the children of agricultural laborers 
in the immediate vicinity of flourishing manufactories. 

We have now reached a position where we can judge of 
the adequacy of the force which Prof. Cairnes invokes to 
secure to labor its needed mobility, and we must pronounce 
it wholly insufficient. Even were the whole mass of 
labor coming each year into market to be reckoned as 
•'disposable" in the sense in which he uses the term, it 
would yet sometimes fall short of effecting that redistribu- 
tion which is required by changes which, as we have seen 
not infrequently amount in a few years almost to a revo- 
lution of industry ; but when we consider how partial and 
doubtful is the mobility thus claimed for the rising gen- 
eration of laborers, we are constrained to say that unless 
more can be adduced than Prof. Cairnes has shown, 
the freedom of movement within industrial groups which 
he has claimed to be practically perfect, is in truth very 
inadequate to effect that object of supreme importance to 
labor — the free and quick resort to the best market. 

But it may be asked, is not the ubiquity of the " tramp " 
a proof that you have over-estimated the difficulty which 
besets the movement of labor ? Is there not a large adult 
population which is constantly shifting its place, here to- 
day and there to-morrow ? What more could you ask ? 

I answer, there is no more virtue to relieve the pres- 
sure upon honest self-respecting labor in the forces which 
direct the movement of the " tramp," than there is of vir- 
tue to save men from drowning in the forces which bring 
a human body to the surface after a certain period of putre- 
faction. The body comes up, indeed, but only when 

' " An agricultural laborer is not suddenly converted into a cotter 
weaver. Sucli a transition rarely takes place ; but if there is a manu 
factory close at band many of the children of the agricultural laborers 
will be employed therein." — Pol. Econ., p. 170. 



TEE MOBILITY OF LABOR. SOS 

swollen and discolored by the processes of corrnption ; 
and so the laborer, who has lost his hopefulness and self- 
respect and become industrially degraded, whether by 
bad habits for which he is primarily in fault, or by the 
force of causes he had no strength to resist, wanders about 
the country begging his food and stealing his lodgings aa 
he can ; but his freedom, thus obtained by being loosed 
from all ties to social and domestic life, does not so much 
relieve labor as it c^irses the whole community, rich and 
poor alike. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE WAGES CLASS. 

It has been said that, by most systematic writers on 
political economy, the wages class is taken as coincident 
with the labor class. In the opening chapter I briefly 
indicated five important classes thus brought together 
under a single title. In the present chapter it is proposed 
to show that of the five, but two can with any propriety 
be said to receive wages ; and of these two, it is proposed, 
though not with the same degree of assurance, to exclude 
one, leaving but a single class as really the recipient of 
wages. It is hoped that, by strictly defining the wages 
class, and setting the other classes thus distinguished in 
their true relations to it, something may be added to the 
understanding of the law of wages. 

To begin : The wages class includes only the employed. 
It is not necessary to spend time in proving that by 
etymology, at once, and popular usage, the word is re- 
stricted to the remuneration paid by one person to another. 
Those who give the word a wider significance in political 
economy are bound to justify themselves in doiug so, by 
showing that something is gained, in clearness, thereby. 
But my reason for desiring to confine the word as has 
been proposed, in a treatise on wages, is better than a 
linguistic one. It is that the very object of the inquiry ia 
to ascertain the laws which govern the condition of those 
persons who, having no command of the agencies and in- 
strumentalities of production, are obliged to seek employ 



THE WAGES CLASS. 207 

ment and the means of subsistence at the hands of others. 
It is the condition of this class that the philanthropist is 
especially interested in, because this is preeminently the 
dependent class. The economist should be equally inter- 
ested because just here comes the real strain in the distri- 
bution of the products of industry. How, for example, 
if we group employer and employed in one great " wages'* 
class, can we properly reach the subjects of strikes and 
trades unions? Are we not, most unnecessarily and in 
most undeserved contempt of popular speech, slurring over 
and obliterating the natural and obvious distinction which 
points Tis the way to the right discussion of some of the 
most important questions of distribution, when we speak 
of the wages of a cotton manufacturer ; wages stipulated 
by no one, due from no one, and, if paid at all, paid by 
the accidental consumer of the product? 

If employers do not belong in the wages class, no more 
do those who are neither employers nor employed ; who 
having command of the agencies and instrumentalities of 
production sufficient for their own labor, take a most im- 
portant part, indeed, in the production of wealth ; but, own- 
ing the entire product, have no concern whatever with the 
distribution of wealth, and hence nothing to do with wages. 

We thus exclude the whole body of peasant proprietors, 
who in many countries constitute the bulk of the popula- 
tion, and are, taking the whole world together, undoubt- 
edly more numerous than any other single class which we 
shall have occasion to charactei'ize. These persons, culti- 
vating their own land with their own labor only, or per- 
haps with that of their wives and minor children (having 
no separate rights or interests recognized by the law of the 
land, and hence capable of making no demand, as laborers, 
for any portion of the product), create in the aggregate a 
vast amount of wealth, but it is wealth not distributed. 
Each such peasant proprietor owns the entire product of 
his land (subject only to the claims of the government for 



208 THE WAGES QVESTION. 

contribution, which claims, being legal and not oconomica 
in their nature, cannot be recognized in an economical 
treatise), to be consumed for the subsistence of himself 
and family and the increase of his own stock, or to be 
exchanged at his pleasure for the products of others. 
Such wealth, therefore, is not subject to distribution, and 
hence we clearly must exclude this body of laborers from 
the wages class. 

In England the peasant proprietor does not exist. 
Forty years ago Prof. Jones' wrote " In parts of England 
and Wales, though the race is fast vanishing, there may 
be seen specimens of our first division of laborers, unhired 
by any one, occupiers of the soil, tilling it with their own 
hands." " 

The " specimens " have by this time all disappeared 
except possibly from Westmoreland and Cumberland, coun- 
ties characterized by comparatively small estates. But 
while the condition of large landed properties, cultivated 
by hired agricultural laborers, is almost universal in Eng- 
land and Scotland, one cannot cross the narrow seas in 
any direction without coming upon a condition very 
different.^ To the west, Ireland furnishes an example of 
which we shall speak in connection with another class of 
producers; while, before one reaches the coast of France, 
he finds in the " Channel Islands," a part of the British 
empire but retaining their own laws regulating the descent 
of landed property, a body of peasant proprietors who 
have furnished the advocates of that system of cultivation 
with some of their most valued illustrations. In France 

' " Whose Essay on the distribution of Wealth (or rather Rent) is a 
copious repertory of valuable facts on the landed tenure of different 
countries."— J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., I. 297. 

» Pol. Econ., p. 15. 

'" You have no other peasantry like that of England. You have no 
other country in which it is entirely divorced from the land. There is 
no other country in the world where you will not find men turning 
up the furrow in their own freehold " — Cobden, Speeches, II, 116. 



TEE WAGES GLASS. 20? 

the principle of " partible succession," introduced by the 
Revolution, has created a vast number of small properties, 
estimated at between four and five and a half millions. 

" In Germany a revolution of the same nature, though 
not of the same magnitude, has been eflfected in a more 
regular manner. The benefits of landed property have 
been imparted progressively to a numerous and prosperous 
class of cultivators by the abolition of feudal superiorities, 
by the restriction of entails and special destination of 
property, by the deliberate division of estates between the 
landlord and the occupier, on a basis, if not always equitable 
to the former, at least patriotic in its motives and happy in 
its results, and by the operation of rules of succession re- 
producing in some instances and in others adopting with 
various modifications, the maxims of the French Code.* " 

In Italy, under the principle of partible succession, 
somewhat modified, and through sale of church lands and 
the dismemberment of feudal estates subject to commu- 
nal rights ; and in Russia, through the emancipation of 
the serfs and their investiture with portions of the estates 
to which they formerly belonged, we have a large and 
increasing portion of the soil cultivated by its owners, 
working for themselves and by themselves, receiving the 
whole produce of the soil, subject only to deduction 
hrough taxation. 



But it is not only the peasant proprietor of Europe, the 
" farmer " of America, who must be excluded from the 
wages class on the ground that he is not dependent on 
another for employment. In the same class economically, 
so far as the principles of distribution are concerned, are 
large bodies of mechanical laborers, artisans, who having 
possession of the a^cencies and instrumentalities of pro- 

* Address of Lord ]S"apier and Ettrick. Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1873 



810 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

duction, are enabled to produce wealth dj their own 
labor, without the consent of any person, the product 
being all their own and hence not subject to distribution, 
though presumably in great part exchanged for the pro- 
ducts, especially the agricultural products, of others. 
These persons, again, receive no wages, are not hired. 
They are no more the employed than they are the em- 
ployers ; indeed they are neither. Distribution has 
nothing to do with them. 

Adam Smith recognized this class. "It sometimes 
happens," he says, " that a single independent workman 
has stock enough both to purchase the materials of his 
work and to maintain himself till it be completed. He is 
both master and workman, and enjoys the whole produce 
of his labor.' 

I do not, for the present, say that the condition of this 
class is better or worse than that of the wages class, but 
only that the two classes stand in different economical 
relations, and should be treated separately. The self-emi- 
ployed laborer has still to seek his market, and if the mar- 
ket fail him he may suffer or starve like the wage laborer ; 
but it is a market for his product that he seeks, not for his 
labor ; and in the pregnant fact that he has possession of 
the agencies and instrumentalities of production, and may 
work in his place without the leave or help of any, is 
found an abundant reason for preserving the distinction 
expressed above. 

Closely allied to the peasant proprietor in many respect 
economically, though differing widely in others, and not 
the less distinctly to be excluded from the wages class, are 
those tenants, whether known as ryots in Asia or meta- 
yers in Europe, who have, whether by law or by impera- 
tive custom, a recognized right to the cultivation of soil 
which they do not own, upon the payment of a fixed share 

» Wealth of Nations, I. 69. 



THE WAGES GLASS. 211 

of the produce. The wealth thus produced is, indeed, un- 
like that produced by the classes previously described, 
subject to distribution, inasmuch as the owner of the soil 
is here entitled to participate in the results of the industry ; 
but the tenant's share is still in no sense wages. He is not 
of the employed class ; he is not dependent on the will 
of another for the opportunity to labor ; he has a right to 
work on that particular body of land and to enjoy the 
fruits of his labor, subject only to the due payment of the 
share of the product going to the landlord— be the same 
an individual or the state. And this is equally true whether 
the right of the tenant to remain in occupancy is one fixed 
by law, or only by a custom which is so distinct and im- 
perative as to give a practical assurance of permanency. 
And it is equally true whether the amount of rent be fixed 
by law, or by a custom which the owner so far respects as 
to put it out of his disposition to undertake to raise it.^ 

The metayer system, under which the landowner re- 
ceives a deiinite share of the produce, originally one-half, 
as the term implies, but varying in present usage from 
one-half to two-thirds, according to local law or custom, 
once prevailed throughout the western division of Conti- 
nental Europe, Italy, France, and Spain.^ In France, 

» " In Tuscany," writes Sismondi, and the remark holds true of 
most parts of Italy where the metayer system prevails, " publio 
opinion protects the cultivator. A proprietor would not dare to im- 
pose conditions unusual in the country, and even in changing one 
metayer for another he alters nothing of the rent." 

" In this country (England) the cultivator of the soil and the owner 
of the soil are, as a rule, diflferent persons ; in other countries they are, 
as a rule, the same; or where they are not the same the owner of the 
soil rather occupies the position of a perpetuallessor or mortgagee than 
that of a landlord whose contracts with his tenants are constantly lia- 
ble to revision." — Prof. Rogers' Pol. Econ., p. 151. 

" Prof. Jones finds the origin of the metayer system of Western 
Europe, in Greece, from which it was adopted by the Romans, and in- 
troduced into Italy first, and France and Spain afterwards. Prof, 
Rogers finds that the metayer system was introduced quite generally 



212 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

since the Revolution, it has been largely superseded bj 
peasant proprietorship ; and in Italy, since the unification 
of the kingdom, the same process has been going on, 
though more slowly. A large portion of the soil of these 
three countries is, however, still cultivated under this 
tenure. 

The ryot system of Asia and Turkey in Europe is held 
by some economists to be substantially equivalent to per- 
sonal proprietorship ; by others to be the Oriental equiva- 
lent of the metayer system, the taxes, varying from fifty 
upwards to perhaps seventy per cent., which the govern- 
ment levies on the produce, being regarded as virtually the 
rent of the land. The question need not be discussed 
here, for it is evident that, whichever way it might be 
decided, the ryot is not a wage laborer. 

In a very different economical position is the cottar ten- 
ant, who is liable, on the expiry of his longer or shorter 
lease, or at the will of the landlord in the absence of a 
lease, to have his rent raised ; and on his inability to re- 
sist or to satisfy such a demand, or even from the personal 
prejudices or preferences of the landlord, to be ejected 
from his occupancy ; yet we cannot designate his share 
of the product of the soil, after deducting rent, by the 
term wages. The condition of the cottar may be better 
than that of the wage laborer, or it may easily be worse ; 
but worse or better, it is certainly different, and results 
from wholly different economical relations. As we go 
forward the unfitness of such a designation, if, indeed, 
there should be any question concerning it, will be made 
to appear more clearly than could be done at present with- 

into England after the great plague of 1348, and prevailed for about 
sixty years, when it was " superseded by the growth of a hardy and 
prosperous yeomanry, who either purchased the land in parcels, or 
bargained to work it with their own capital, and at a money rent." 
Pol. Econ., 168, 170. The fate of these yeomen in England has been 
noticed. 



THE WAGES CLASS. 2l» 

out an extensive excursion from the path of our discus- 
sion ; bat it will perhaps be sufficient at this point, waiv- 
ing objections from etymology and popular use, to say that 
it is of the essence of wages that they are ab stipulated 
rates, and therefore certain in amount, while the produce 
of the cottar tenant is never certain, since nature declines 
to make any stipulation, and the quantity and quality ol 
the crop must always remain, up to the moment of har- 
vesting, a matter of conjecture. 

The cottar tenancy is still very general in Ireland. 
The soil is held in small quantities/ by the great body oi 
the agricultural laboring population.' 



We have thus far insisted that only the employed 
shall be included in the wages class. Applying this test 
of dependence on others for the opportunity to labor, we 
have successively excluded several large bodies of laborers, 
constituting in the aggregate the vast majority' of the hu- 
man race. In respect to the production of most of these, 
the principles of distribution do not apply. In contem- 
plating their condition and prospects, we have only to 
consider the law of production taken in connection with 
the law of population. Masters of their own fate, econom- 
ically, whether they shall be happy or miserable will 
depend [assuming their own industry, frugality and sobri- 
ety], first, upon their habits in respect to procreation ; 



> Of the 682,237 holdings in Ireland, 512,080 are of less value than 
15^. a year each, 527,000 are tenancies at will. — Statistical Journal, 
xxxiii, 152. 

^ Day-laborers in agriculture were, until recently, almost unknown 
in Ireland. They are now appearing in considerable numbers. — Les- 
lie's Land Systems, etc. p. 44. 

* " The unbired laborers who are peasant cultivators," according 
to Prof. Jones, comprised in his day "probably two-thirds of the la 
boring population of the globe." — Pol. Econ., p. 14. 



214 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Becond, upon the acts of their government, protecting them 
or robbing them, as the case may be, with which pohtical 
economy has nothing to do ; and third, on the kindness 
or nnkindness of nature in affording sun and shower in 
due order and proportion, and with this, again, political 
economy has nothing to do. 

"We have applied the test of employment. We must 
now apply other tests, still further to reduce the range of 
our investigation. 

First, we count out all those who, though em- 
ployed, are employed on shares. It is, as has been said, of 
the essence of wages, that they are stipulated in amount. 
In the case of laborers working on shares, no definite 
amount is stipulated ; but only the proportion of an uncer- 
tain product which shall go to the laborer. His remunera 
tion, therefore, becomes greater with good luck and favor- 
able weather, or smaller with the reverse. He shares with 
the employer the risk of bad seasons and accidental loss ; 
and is entitled to participate in all the advantage of every 
fortunate venture. In other words, he is the partner of 
his employer, dependent indeed, with no voice in the man- 
agement, and perhaps on hard terms, but a partner still 
in the distribution of the product; a condition which is 
strongly contrasted with that of the wage-laborers proper, 
who have their remuneration at fixed rates, receiving no 
less if the business be unsuccessful (except in the rare and 
not anticipated event of bankruptcy) ; and receiving no 
more, however great the returns of the industry. 

The class of hired laborers working on shares is not 
large, but it is desirable that it should be clearly separated 
and excluded from the wage class for scientific precision. 
The share principle is applied somewhat extensively in 
mining, but its chief application is on the sea, where it 
becomes of great importance to interest all hands in the 
Buccess of the enterprise. In fishing vessels and whalers 
of almost all nationalities, and with the Greeks even iu 



THE WAQE8 GLASS. 215 

the general merchant service, the crews take shares in the 
venture. 

Secondly, it is m}'- view that another and a very largo 
body of laborers should be excluded from the wages class 
in treating the questions of distribution, though the term 
wages is applied, and with entire propriety, to the remu- 
neration of this class of persons, and its exclusion may 
not meet the general assent which I trust will be accorded 
to the exclusions previously effected. 

What, then, is the class thus to be excluded against 
common usage ? It includes those persons who are defined 
by Prof. Jones ^ as paid, or supported, out of the revenues 
of their employers. I deem the difference between this 
class, which it is proposed throughout the further course 
of this work to call the salary or stipend class, and that 
vvhich I shall call the wa&es class, to be not only suflSciently 
clear to justify the economist in giving to the former a 
distinctive name, but so important in its bearings on the 
relation of persons of that class to their employers, and on 
their claim to a share of distributed wealth, as to render it 
imperative to treat them separately. 

The domestic servant affords, perhaps, the best illustra- 
tion, for present purposes, of the salary or stipend class. 
He is not employed as a means to his master's profit. His 
master's income is not due in any part to his employment; 
on the contrary, that income is first acquired, or its acqui- 
sition reasonably assured ; and in the amount of the in- 
come is determined whether the servant shall be employed 
or not, while to the full extent of that employment the 
income is diminished. As Adam Smith expresses it, "a 
man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufac- 
turers ; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude of 
menial servants.'' ^ 



» Pol. Econ., p. 420. 

• Wealth of Nations, I, 333. 



216 THE WAGES QUESTIOIt. 

The case ol the wage laborer is different. He is era- 
ployed with a view to his master's profit ; the master's 
income is the result of snch emploj'ment of labor; and, 
with the exercise of due judgment, that income will be 
greater by reason of the employment, within the limits of 
his productive capacity, of each additional man. " Though 
the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his 
master, he in reality costs him no expense, the whole 
value of those wages being generally restored, togethei' 
with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon 
which his labor is bestowed. But the maintenance of a 
menial servant is never restored." * 

The expectation of profits, be it observed, furnishes the 
test for discriminating the wages class from the stipend or 
salary class. It is not necessary that the profit expected 
in the employment of persons of the former class should 
always be realized ; nay, in a given case, actual loss may 
result without changing the character of the service. But 
unless the reason for the employment is found in the ex- 
pectation of a profit to the employer out of the production 
in which the laborer is to be engaged, we do not find in 
such employment the true sign of the wages class. Hence 
we may broadly say, No profits, no wages. 



Let us recapitulate. We have, first, excluded the em- 
ploying class ; second, all who, having possession of the 
agencies and instrumentalities of production, whether 
agricultural or mechanical, are not dependent on others 
for the opportunity to produce ; third, those who, though 
not owning land, lease it, whether under the protection of 
law or subject to all the hardships of competition. These 
Bue3essive exclusions leave us the employed class, whether 
in agriculture or manufactures. From this we further ex- 
I ■ .1. 

• Wealth of Nations. 



THE WAGES GLASS. 21 , 

elude all who produce on shares, and all who are paid oi 
subsisted out of the revenues of their employers. We 
have left the wages class proper, including all persons who 
are employed in production with a view to the profit of 
their employers, and are paid at stipulated rates. This ia 
the class whose economical position and interests it is pro- 
posed here to discuss. With such limitations as have been 
imposed, the wages question is not of that wide interest 
which is'given to it when pretty much the whole human 
race is brought within its scope ; but it may be that by this 
limitation our inquiries will become more fruitful, i 

But though the wage class includes but a fraction of 
humanity, it is perhaps as large as can be comfortably 
treated in a work of a single volume. Of the eighty mil- 
lions of English-speaking people, three-fourths probab].y, 
two-thirds certainly, subsist on wages. 

It may be well here to anticipate a hostile criticism. It 
may be said that we have made our analysis of the labor- 
ing population an essential part of our theory of wages, 
while yet, in fact, no inconsiderable number of persons 
sustain economical relations which refuse to submit to such 
a classification. Thus there are persons belonging alter- 
nately to the wages and to the stipend class, now employed 
for profit, now paid out of revenue. In like manner there 
are persons in every community who are employed aa 
hired laborers during portions of the year, while at other 
seasons they are engaged in production on their own ac- 
count in their own shops or on their own small holdings 
of land. 

To this it may be replied that while the recognition of 

« " The (third) class of hired laborers, paid from capital, has so ex 
clusively met the eyes and occupied the thoughts of English writers 
on wages, that it has led them into some serious and very unfor- 
tunate mistakes as to the nature, extent, and formation of the funda 
out of which the laboring population of the globe is fed, and, as usual, 
.hey have misled foreign writers." — R. Jones, Pol. Econ., p. 15 



318 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

vast bodies of undistributed wealth which are yet subject 
to exchange, is here asserted to be necessary to a right 
understanding of some of the phenomena of wages, the 
validity of this position does not depend on the possibility 
of an exact enumeration of the several classes defined. 
On this point I cannot do better than quote from the 
admirable chapter on Economic Definition, which Prof. 
Cairnes, just before his lamented death, added to his treat 
ise on the Logical Method of Political Economy. 

" In controversies about definitions, nothing is more 
common than to meet objections founded on the assump- 
tion that the attribute on which a definition turns, ought to 
be one which does not admit of degrees. This being 
assumed, the objector goes on to show that the facts or 
objects placed within the boundary line of some definition 
to which objection is taken, cannot, in their extreme 
instances be clearly discriminated from those which lie 
without. Some equivocal example is then taken, and the 
framer of the definition is challenged to say in which 
category it is to be placed. Now it seems to me that an 
objection of this kind ignores the inevitable conditions 
under which a scientific nomenclature is constructed, alike 
in political economy and in all the positive sciences. In 
such sciences, nomenclature, and therefore definition, is 
based on classification, and to admit of degrees is the char- 
acter of all natural facts. As has been said, there are no hard 
lines in nature. Between the animal and vegetable king- 
doms, for example, where is the line to be drawn ? . . . 
It is, therefore, no valid objection to a classification, nor 
consequently, to the definition founded upon it, that 
instances may be found which fall, or seem to fall, on our 
lines of demarcation. This is inevitable in the nature of 
things. But this notwithstanding, the classification, and 
therefore the definition, is a good one, if, in those instances 
which do not fall on the line, the distinctions ma/rked hy 
the definition are such as it is important to marJc, such 



THE WAQE8 CLASS. 218 

that the recognition of them will help the inquirer for 
ward toward the desiderated goal." ^ 

THE EXCHANGE OF DISTEIBUTED FOE TrNDISTRIBUTED * 
WEALTH. 

But it may be asked, what avails it to show that the 
wages classes, instead of being co-extensive with the labor 
class, as is assumed in the current theories respecting 
wages, is only a small fraction of it, communicating with 
those other great masses of labor, only in the exchange of 
its completed and marketed products ? How can this fact 
bear on the question, whether wages may be increased 
actually and permanently? Are not wages governed by 
exactly the same principles as if the wages class constituted 
the whole of the labor class, instead of one-fifth, one-sixth, 
or one-seventh ? 

I answer, in the first place, that if the wages class is 
only a fraction of the labor class, that fact should be clearly 
set forth in discussions of the wages question, and the 
extent of the interests involved should be, as nearly as 
possible, indicated. The reader has a right to know 
whether the principles laid down govern the fortunes of 
substantially the whole human race, or of only one-fifth or 
one-seventh of it. The confusion of the labor question 
with the wages question, is as unnecessary as it is unscien- 
tific. 

But secondly, I answer that the fact of the production 
of a vast body of undistributed wealth, portions of which 
are subject to exchange with distributed wealth, may, and 
does, powerfully affect the condition of the wages class. 

Let us discriminate. So far as undistributed wealth, 
that is, wealth which is produced entire by one person ,3 

» Log. Meth. Pol. Econ. p. 139-141. 
■ p. 4. 

• With the assistance, it may be, of his wife and minoi children 
whose labor is, in the eye of the law, his own. 



220 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

who owns the whole product, is not exchanged but is eon 
sumed by the producer, as is the case with probably the 
major part of such wealth, the world over, no effect on the 
wages class can be wrought thereby. That wealth, being 
neither distributed nor exchanged, neither its production 
nor its consumption concerns other classes of producers. 
But so far as undistributed wealth is exchanged against 
distributed wealth, there is a distinct possibility, therein, 
of eain or loss to the wages class. 

It was remarked in our first chapter, that it is as truly 
impossible to explain all the phenomena of wages, with- 
out reference to this outside body of undistributed wealth, 
as it would be to account for the Gulf Stream, without 
reference to the colder waters between which, and ever 
which, it flows. We are now in a position to justify this 
remark. We have seen (chap, x,) that the theory that all 
burdens are divided and all benefits diffused equally 
throughout industrial society, rests on the assumption of 
perfect competition. Industrial society is taken, for the 
purposes of this reasoning, as composed of economical atoms, 
absolutely equivalent, possessing complete mobility and 
elasticity. Given this condition, all that Bastiat has 
claimed for the economical harmonies, is happily true. 
The laborer and the employer feel the force of competition 
equally, and neither has a natural advantage over the other. 
The laborer feels the force of competition alike as seller of 
labor and as buyer of commodities. Labor and capital 
flow freely to their best market. The highest price which 
any employer can afford to give will be the lowest which 
any laborer will consent to receive ; while, as between any 
two departments of production, the advantages enjoyed by 
the laborers, capitalists and employees engaged will be 
absolutely equalized. 

But, on the other hand, it is evident that the least vis- 
cosily of material^ the slightest idiosyncrasy of structure 
must^ in a degree^ defer, if not entirely defeat, the tend- 



THE WAGES GLASS. 221 

enoy to the propagation, through economic media, of any 
economic impulse. Just so far as men differ in their 
industrial quality., or are diversely organized in natural 
or artificial groups, j ust so far there is the possibility that 
one person or class of 'persons may he disproportionately 
affected hy an economic force j may receive more or receive 
less of the benefit, ma}'- suffer less or suffer more of the 
burden, than his or their just distributive share. 

Now the division of the body of laborers into the 
employed and the non-employed, or independent work- 
men, is a great structural fact which cannot but profoundly 
influence the propagation of economic impulses. Doubt- 
less there are compensations in the condition of i\\Q wages 
class; while nothing could exceed the misery of whole 
nations of peasant proprietors or tenant occupiers, where 
the government fails to render the protection to which the 
subject is entitled, or where, as too often happens, the 
government becomes the plunderer of the people. Yet, 
through all, we discern in the fact that the wages class are 
dependent on others for the opportunity and the means to 
labor, not having, in their own right, possession of the 
agencies and instrumentalities of production, the possibil- 
ity of deep and lasting detriment. 

I have already expressed the opinion, in criticism of 
Prof. Cairnes' doctrine of non-competing groups, that com- 
petition never becomes nil, for practical purposes. But let 
us for the moment inquire what would be the effects, did 
the employed and the non-employed constitute two great 
non-competing groups ; that is, did not the employed ever 
become an independent workman ; or the independent 
workman ever seek employment. We will also suppose 
competition to be perfect within the employed class. 

It is evident that upon these assumptions any economi- 
cal impulse, for good or for evil, which should be experi- 
enced anywhere in the latter class, would extend at once 
and without loss through the whole body of the employed, 



223 THE WAGES qXTESTION. 

that the burden would be divided or the benefit difiiised 
among the entire mass, action and reaction continuing un- 
til equilibrium was everywhere restored. But this im- 
pulse would not be propagated across the dividing lino 
between the employed and the non-employed. The econo- 
mical movement would cease in this direction as abruptly 
as a vein of gold stops at a new geologic formation. For 
good or for evil, the non-employed would feel no econo- 
mical sympathy with the employed. Each group would 
meet its own fate, individually, by itself. Certain " ex- 
changing proportions " would be established for the sur- 
plus products of the two groups; a scale of relative prices 
would be reached by trade between them ; but so long as 
labor was not free to flow across the line of demarcation 
there would not be even a tendency to the equalization of 
the wages of the employed to the average production of 
the independent workman. 

Now, as has been said, there is no such utter failure of 
competition as is here assumed for the purposes of illustra- 
tion. The employed do come, in greater or less degree, to 
be independent workmen ; independent workmen do 
come under employment. The facility with which these 
interchanges are made depends much upon the nature of 
special industries, much upon the character of the individ- 
ual workman, much upon the state of legislation and the 
social condition of the country. In some lands the move- 
ment across the line dividing the employed and the non- 
employed is very free, many laborers alternating between 
their own little farms or shops, where they work for them- 
selves by themselves, receiving all advantages and suffer 
ing all losses, and the larger estates or factories where they 
come under direction and control, and receive wages at 
stipulated rates. In other lands the transition is slow and 
uainful ; in some it can scarcely be said to be effected at 
all. ■^ On the whole, it is notorious that interchanges be- 

' " No English agricultural laborer, in his most sanguine dreams 



THE WAGES CLASS. 223 

tween the two groups are comparatively rare ; the great 
mass of the employed never have the choice whether thev 
will set up for themselves ; they abide in their lot and 
share, because they have no resource, the fortune of their 
class, be that good or evil. The division we have indi- 
cated remains incontestibly the greatest structural fact in 
modern industrial society, telling powerfully upon the 
rate and direction in which economic impulses shall be 
propagated. 

If this be so, and I do not look to see it questioned by 
any one, then there clearly is the possibility that one of 
these groups may profit at the expense of the other, since 
the only security which could exist for their sharing 
equally the benefits and burdens of production would be 
found in the unimpeded interchange of labor. "Which of 
the two is more likely to be the gainer in the exchange of 
its marketed products, whether it be the independent work- 
man who has possession of the means and materials of 
production, who can create wealth in his own name and 
right, and has to ask no man's leave to labor, or the em- 
ployed workman, will more clearly appear the further we 
carry our discussion of the conditions of the wages class in 
modern industrial society. 

has tlie vision of occupying, still less of possessing, land "— Rogers 
ffist. of Agr. and Prices, I, 693. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CAPITALIST CLASS: RETURNS OF CAPITAL I RENT AND 
INTEREST. 

Of capital it is not necessary to discuss here either the 
origin or the office. Many economists carefully exclude 
land from the lists of capital. What Ricardo calls " the 
original and indestructible^ powers of tlie soil," not being 
the creation of labor, and commanding, as they do, for 
their possessor, an annual remuneration, over and above 
the proper returns of labor (as determined by the yield of 
the poorest soils under cultivation), are, these writers hold, 
not in the nature of capital. 

But whatever be the economical nature or the social 
justification of rent, the facts tliat land almost everywliere 
bears its price proportioned to this annual income ; that a 
great part of all the land in possession to-day in civilized 
countries was actually acquired by purchase, tlirough tlie 
payment of undoubted capital ; tliat this interchange of 
fixed and circulating capital is constantly taking place, land 
always practically having its price in denominations of 
capital, capital surely commanding the use or fee of land ; 
and finally that no small part, often by far the greatest 
part, of the selling price of land represents, on any theory 
of rent, the actual investment of capital merged indistin- 
guishably with the original productive powers of the soil, 
these facts justify me, 1 think, for all present purposes, in 
embracing alike the proprietors of land and the owners of 

• Ricardo's theory of rent applies to land only as it is assumed to be 



THE RETURNS OF CAPITAL. 225 

other forms of wealth which may be used productively, in 
one capital-class. 

Capital, then, whether in land or in some other form, ii 
it be employed productively, yields a return to its owner 
over and above the remuneration of the labor applied. 
The laws which govern these returns of capital it is not 
necessary to discuss here. My only concern with the 
capital class is to define its membership and ascertain how 
far that coincides with the membership of the employing 
class. 

But, first, a definition. When capital is employed re- 
productively by the owner, the generic term, returns, sufh- 
ciently describes the increase of production effected there- 
by. When capital is employed by a person not the owner, 
" returns " still describe the increased product ; but the 
special terms, rent and interest, come into use to charac- 
terize the sums paid out of those returns to the owner. I 
say " out of those returns," for commonly rent and interest 
are something less than the amount by which the product 
has been enhanced, otherwise it would not ordinarily be 
worth the while to borrow and become responsible for the 
capital so applied, though it may happen, and not infre- 
quently does, that the desire of the borrower (I use the 
term here genericall}'-, to include the occupier of land) to 
relieve himself of dependence on an employer, by coming 
into possession himself of the agencies and instrumentali- 
ties of production, maj^ lead him to pay more, as interest 
or rent, than the returns of capital, measured by the ex- 
cess of the product over the value of his labor expressed in 
wages at current rates. 

It seems to me best that the words rent and interest 
should only be used where capital is actually leased or 
loaned. There is, indeed, highly respectable authority for 

unimproved. Diifereuces of fertility wrouglit by actual applicationa 
of capital, are to be compensated on the same principles as invest- 
ments of equal safety and permanence. 



226 THE WAGES QUESTION 

saying of a man cultivating his own land, that he ^ay« 
7'ent to himself, or of one using his own circulating capital, 
that he pays interest to himself. But it is better to avoid 
all such strained uses of words which have a precise mean- 
ing, by which the^^ till an important place in economical 
terminology. Let the returns of capital remain the generic 
term, while rent and interest are employed only with re- 
spect to payments for capital actually leased or loaned. 

Who, then, constitute the capital class? Who receive 
the returns of capital ? 

With that vast body of property, real and personal, 
which is employed in production by peasant proprietors, 
or occupiers of land under a practically indefeasible ten- 
ure, whether guaranteed by law or imperative custom, this 
treatise has nothing to do, except that it may be noted in 
passing that those who speak of the capitalist as the em- 
ployer of labor, are obliged to regard these peasant pro- 
prietors or occupiers as their own employers, another 
instance of a perversion of economical terms made neces- 
sary by a false analysis. 

If we turn to England and Scotland, where the soil is 
cultivated under farmer-rents, we do not find the owners 
of land employing agricultural labor to any considerable 
extent, except in the ornamentation of grounds, payment 
for which is made out of revenues already acquired, and 
the sums so paid are hence, according to our definition, not 
wages, but salary or stipend. Where agricultui'al laborers 
are employed for profit in England, it is almost universally 
by a middle-man, a farmer, who, on the one hand, leases 
the land from the owner, and on the other agrees with the 
laborer for his work, by the year, the month, or the daj'-, 
obligating himself to pay landlord and laborer at fixed 
rates, and looking to his own enterprise and economy to 
secure his own remuneration out of a product which 
varies continually with good or ill fortune, with good or 
ill management. The English farmer is, however, almost 



TBE CAPITALIST GLASS. 22Y 

necessarily the owner of circulating capital to some ex- 
tent, not only to guarantee the landlord's rent and the 
laborers' wages, but also to purchase live stock, seed, tools, 
and machinery, and to make advance of wages while the 
crops are growing. But he is not necessarily the owner 
of circulating capital to anything like the extent to which 
he uses it ; good character and a reputation for business 
sapacity will enable him, under the modern organization 
^f credit, to command the use of far more than he actually 
possesses. 

In France, peasant proprietorship gives form to the 
agriculture of the country ; but even under the old regime 
the seignior-capitalist did not directly employ labor, and 
A.rthur Young pokes fun at the great lords who, desiring 
the reputation of cultivating the soil, when that had be- 
come a fashion in France, let out on shares portions of 
their estates immediately about the chateau ! In the 
United States the land is, as a rule, held either by persons 
3orresponding industrially to the " peasant proprietors" of 
Europe, but rejecting that term, and calling themselves 
very inappropriately " farmers," or by larger operators 
who hold the fee of the land and cultivate it by hired 
labor. Land leased for purposes of agriculture is here 
highly exceptional. But while the legal owner of the 
land is thus in a considerable degree the employer of 
labor, it is to a very large extent capital borrowed on note 
or mortgage which enables him to eke out the purcliase 
money of the " farm," to stock it, and to pay wages in 
anticipation of the crop. 

We thus see that even in agriculture, where the effects 
of lordship still survive, the capitalist is not necessarily the 
employer of labor, nor is the employer of labor limited in 
his operations by the extent of his personal ownership of 
capital. But if we turn to the department of mechanical 
industry, in which lordship never had existence, and aL 
that has survived from feudal times (the trades unions, aa 



22S THE WAGES QUESTION. 

the illegitimate snccessore of the ancient guilds) is antagc 
nistic to the employer's anthority ; a department which it 
eniinentlj thetieldof " new men," and in which the hered- 
itary principle is reduced to a minimum, we find the as- 
sumption that the capitalist is the employer, the employer 
the capitalist, monstrously unreal. True it is that the 
employer should be a capitalist, that he should have posses- 
sion of some accumulations, not only to guarantee ^ the 
loans he contracts and the wages he becomes responsible 
for, but also to steady his own operations, lest he should 
act as one who has everything to gain and nothing to lose ; 
true it is that able employers come to own an increasing 
share of the capital used in their increasing business ; and 
that the larger their accumulations become, the greater the 
freedom and strength with which they conduct business. 
Yet it still remains that the employer is not an employer 
because he is a capitalist, or in proportion as he is a capi- 
talist. Of capitalists under our modem organization of in 
dustry, but a small minority employ labor ; of employers 
few but use capital far in excess of what they own. More- 
over the employer who owns little capital ; the employer 
who owns much, and the employer who owns perchance 
all he employs, are not to be distinguished in their indus- 
trial attitude and relations, or in the nature, or, generally 
we may say, in the extent of their operations; but differ 
only in the ease, freedom, and security with which they 
conduct their respective businesses. And that difierence is, 
in ordinary times, not very noticeable. One employer, in- 
deed, is down on the books of the Commercial Agency 
with A five times repeated, and his paper is known as 

' Mr. Bicardo makes this distinction in respect to the banker him- 
self. " The distinctive function of the banker V/egins as soon as he 
uses the money of others." Yet, though it is the use of other pe<^>p]e's 
money that characterizes the banker, it is important that he should 
be known or supposed to have money of his own to afford guarantT 
of his good faith and prudence. 



THE CAPITALIST CLASS. 329 

'gilt edged." Anotlier must be content to be rated lowei 
by the Agency, live smaller, pay a little more interest on 
loans, rnn around a little more lively before the close of 
banking hours, and be served after his betters. But the 
outside world sees very little diUerence, granting them 
equality of business ability, in their era^ioyment of labor 
or conduct of affairs. 

"Who, then, are the capitalists who are not employers of 
labor ? I answer, first, those who by age, sex, or infirm- 
ity are disabled from active operations ; men retired from 
business, women of all ages, children and young persons of 
both sexes, the crippled and incompetent for whom provis- 
ion has been made ; these, in the order of nature, own a 
large part of the property of the world. If their wealth is 
in their own hands, they know their limitations, and do 
not undertake to employ it personally ; if tlieir wealth is 
held for them, the responsibilities of the trustee or guar- 
dian are incompatible with the ventures of manufacture or 
trade. Secondly, those who, from dignity and love of 
leisure, as is especially the case witli men of inherited 
means, are indisposed to increase their store by active ex- 
ertions, but live upon their income ; and those who are 
engaged in professions ^ which do not allow the invest- 
ment of their earnings. Thirdly, the laboring classes, 
whether receiving wages or salaries, who are able, even 
out of scanty earnings, to make savings which they are, 
from the nature of tlieir industrial position, unable to 
apply personally to production. Small as are the individ- 
ual contributions of this class to the loanable capital of a 
community, the statistics of the savings banks show what 
is the virtue of a large multiplier. There might be added, 
perhaps should be added, to the vast aggregate of capital 
thus constituted, the accumulating profits of industries 

' E. g.. Lawyers, physicians, clergymen, arcliitects, engineers, gov 
erniueut officials, and the like. 



B30 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

which are already fall of capital up to the point of " di 
minishing returns," where overflow must take place into 
newer branches of production. Thus no small part of the 
net annual profits of agriculture in Somersetshire and 
Hampshire go up to London to be loaned to the manufac- 
turers of Yorkshire and Lancashire ; ^ while in the United 
States the current is reversed, and the manufacturing divi- 
dends of New England go to the West to be invested in 
agriculture, which can still afford to pay eight, ten, and 
even twelve per cent. Here again we have a large body 
of capital, which, though the owners of it are employers 
in some branch of industry, yet goes to swell the aggregate 
of loanable capital to which employei's who are not capi- 
talists, or who wish to be employers beyond the extent 
which their own capital permits, may resort under the 
modern organization of credit. 



It is so clear that the membership of the capitalist class 
is not coincident with that of the employing class, not- 
withstanding the use by the economists of the word capi- 
talist to signify the employer of labor ; and the subject of 
the relation of the capitalist to the employer is, as far as I 
have occasion to consider it, so simple, that I should not 
have devoted a separate chapter to this class, but have de- 
fined it in remarks introductory of the employing class 
proper, were it not that I desired to emphasize this my 
difi'erence with the text-book writers; and secondly and 
chiefly, that it becomes necessary for me to take exception 
to the use, by the same writers, of the word Profits, an 
exception best taken under the present title. 

My exception is not on linguistic grounds. Profits, so 
far as the etymology of the word goes, might include in> 
terest, rent, wages, and the gain derived from the conduci 



» Bagehot's Lombard Street, p. 13. 



DEFINITION OF PROFITS. 281 

of business, any one or all of these. The economists gen- 
erally use the word to express the returns of capital.* I 
propose to express by it the gains of the employing class, 
letting the returns of capital stand as previously explained 
in this chapter. By what, then, do the economists express 
that which I call profits ? I answer, that as they refuse to 
the employing class a separate entity ,2 so they, logically 
enough, practically deny the existence of profits distinctly 
from the returns of capital. If the employer, who is 
assumed to become an employer because he is a capitalist, 
and to the extent to which he is a capitalist, gives his per 
sonal attention and his time to the business, they acknowl- 
edge that he receives an addition to his income on that ac- 
count, which addition they define as " the wages of super- 
vision and management." This they regard as belonging 
strictly to the category of wages, and treat the case pre- 
cisely as if the employer or "capitalist'' had dispensed 
with a paid overseer, superintendent, or manager, and 
drawn the salary of the position himself — otherwise his 
" profits " are all the proper returns of capital. If he 
chooses to withdraw his personal attention and retain the 
overseer, superintendent, or manager, then his " profits " 
have no such foreign admixture. 

But inasmuch as the theory of distribution offered in 

» " Profits proper, or interest." — Prof. Rogers, Pol. Econ., p. 139. 

" The return for abstinence is profit." — Prof. Cairnes' " Some Lead- 
ing Principles," etc., p. 48. 

" As Mr. Amasa Walker is the only systematic writer on political 
economy, with whose work I am familiar, who recognizes the employ- 
ers of labor as constituting a distinct industrial class, so he is the only 
one who gives the word Profits the significance it has in the text, 
" By the term profits we mean that share of wealth, which, in the 
general distribution, falls to those who effect an advantageous union 
between labor and capital .... the parties, then, to production 
are (1) the laborer, (2) the capitalist, (3) the employer, or manager. 
Each has a distinct province and a separate interest." — Science of 
Wealth, pp. 279-80. 



233 THE WAGES QUESTIOS. 

this treatise requires the recognition of the employers oi 
labor as a distinct industrial class (see Chapter XIY), per- 
forming a function of high importance, something beyond 
"supervision and management," as exercised by hired 
agents, it is evident that a terra is needed to designate the 
share of this class in the product of industry, l^ow, 
while the use which the text-books make of the term 
Profits is, as has been said, not objectionable on linguistic 
grounds, that which is here proposed certainly corresponds 
far better to the popular usage, at least in America. I 
cannot speak with assurance in respect to the significance 
of the word in England ; but with us, few practical men 
would understand a manufacturer's or a merchant's profits 
to include his interest-account. Webster's Dictionary 
gathers the American sense of the word correctly in the 
following definition : " The profit of the farmer and the 
manufacturer is the gain made by sale of produce or man- 
ufactures, after deducting the value of the labor, materials, 
rent, and all expenses, together with the interest of the 
capital employed^ whether land, machinery, buildings, 
instruments, or money." And since this use of the word 
agrees thus with the speech of practical men, while the 
term. Returns of Capital, is perfectly descriptive of the 
object to which it is applied, I trust the reader will not 
revolt at being asked to carry through the further course 
of this enquiry the definition of Profits, as the remunera- 
tion of the employing class, or the gains of business. 

According to our analysis and definition, then, th» 
parties to the distribution of the product of modern indus- 
try, in its highest organization, and the shares they re- 
spectively receive, are as follows : 

1. The Wages Class Wages. 

2. The Capitalist Class Returns of Capital (Rent : Interest) 

8. Tlte Employing Class Profits. 



IS INTEREST A T ITS MINIMUM f 233 

Are the returns of capital alread}" at or near .he mini- 
mum? A very common answer to complaints respecting 
the inadequacy of wages, or to schemes for securing theii 
increase, is that the returns of capital are already as low 
as it is for the interest of the laborers themselves they 
should go ; that if a smaller annual return were to be 
made to the capitalist for the use of his accumulated 
wealth, the disposition to save would be so far affected 
thereby as to reduce the store of capital, and thus diminish 
employment. 1 am embarrassed in making quotations 
from economical writers to show the direction of this 
argument, by the fact that they generally use the M'ord 
profits ' to express the returns of capital (including remu- 
neration for its risk), but with always a possible addition 
of "the vfages of supervision and management." It is, 
therefore, difficult to say whether, in a specific instance, 
the rate of interest is referred to alone, or the remunera 
tion of the man of business, after estimating the proper 
returns of capital, is also included. But as the latter 
element is treated as of comparatively slight importance, 
I think I may assume that, when Professor Cairnes says 
" Profits are already at or within a hand's breadth of the 
minimum," '^ he refers chiefly, if not wholly, to the returns 
upon capital. Of course, if profits be at the minimum, 
any increase of wages which involved a further reduction 
in the returns of capital,' w^ould unquestionably be detri- 
mental. Prof. Fawcett thus works out the effects of such 
a reduction: "If profits are diminished, there is not so 
great an inducement to save, and the amount of capital 
accumulated will decrease ; the wages fund will conse- 

1 " Profit : a word wliicli, like many others in political economy, ia 
very loosely applied." — Prof. Rogers' Pol. Econ., p. 5. 

2 " Some Leading Principles," etc., p. 258. 

8 It has been sliown that it is possible that an advance of wages 
may be made in several ways without involving a reduction either in 
profits or in the returns of capital. 



434 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

quently be diminished, and there will be a smaller amoun 
to distribute among the laboring classes." ^ 

But I fail wholly to understand what evidence Prof. 
Cairnes can have had that the returns of capital are at oi 
near the minimum. If he had in view the fact that in 
England the rate of interest and the returns from capita- 
invested in land are now so low that a continually increas- 
ing amount of capital is going abroad to newer countries, 
this is undoubtedly true ; but it affords no proof that the 
rate of interest in England has reached the point where a 
further reduction would touch the principle of frugality 
in the quick. Every dollar of British capital fortunately 
invested in Australia or the United States helps to cheapen 
the materials of British manufactures, and to widen the 
market for British products. So long as these new coun- 
tries enjoy such extraordinary natural advantages, English 
capital will doubtless continue to go abroad ; but were 
these countries filled up with capital, so as to bring the 
rate of interest down to what it is in England, where is 
the reason for believing that Englishmen would not save 
their wealth for the sake of an annual return lower than 
the present ? The return to an investor in the British 
consols, which are regarded as the ideal security, is about 
three and three-sevenths per cent, per annum. The in- 
surance companies realize about four and one-half per 
cent, on their investments. Railway shares paying five 
per cent, a year sell ordinarily close on 100. Could Prof. 
Cairnes have meant that, if Englishmen could not get five 
per cent, for their capital, or at least three and three-sev- 
enths per annum, they would consume it in self-indul- 
gence ? But we know that the Dutch have accumulated 
vast savings on still lower inducements, for the rate of 
interest in Holland long ruled at two and one-half pel 
sent., M'hile the government borrowed freely at two per 

» Pol. Econ., p. 243. 



THE MOTIVE TO SA VING. 235 

cent. Ifor have we any grounds for assuming that eren 
a lower rate might not find people still saving, be it from 
profits, from wages, or from the returns of previously 
existing capital. 

One consideration of importance, which is often lost 
sight of in this connection, is that the motive to save con- 
tains an element besides the expectation of an annual 
income from the accumulation. Saving is also in the 
nature of an insurance against the casualties of life. The 
strength of this motive to self-denial for the sake of insur- 
ance alone, is seen in communities where there are no 
banks, as in many of the departments of France, and no 
means of ordinary investment, where yet vast sums are 
accumulated by the peasantry.' Not the less in countries 
where banks afibrd the safe and sure means of deriving 
present revenue from savings, does this desire to save, as 
an insurance against the inevitable ills of life, constitute a 
considerable part of the motive to accumulation. Men 
would in a degree provide against old age and sickness, 
provide for the possible widowhood and orphanage of 
those dependent on them, were there no interest on 
money ; and saving thus, a very low rate of interest on 
absolutely safe investments would call their funds into 
producHve use. 

Kow this view, the justice of which cannot, I think, 
be questioned, afibrds the means of judging somewhat 
more critically the statement of Prof. Fawcett just quoted. 
Prof. Fawcett says. If wages are enhanced, profits are 
diminished, and hence less capital will be accumulated. 
But we know, both from the reason of the case and from 
the statistics of the savings banks, that capital may be ac- 
cumulated from wages as well as from profits, whether we 
understand by that term, the returns of capital, or the 

• European financiers have been more than once astonished by the 
enormous accumulations of the French peasantry, when these were 
tapped by a popular loan. 



236 TEE WAGES QUESTIOIT. 

gains of business. Does any one say, a reduction in the 
rate of interest would affect the disposition of the laborers 
to save out of their wages equally with the disposition of 
the capitalist or the employers, to save out of their earn- 
ings ? I answer, no, decidedly not. The motive to save, 
for the sake of insurance, operates with far greater force 
among the laboring class than among the more fortunate 
classes. Thus, taking the case of a hundred laborers work- 
ing for one employer, can it be doubted that the desires of 
all these individuals, even if we make deduction of spend- 
thrifts and drunkards, to provide against old age, sickness, 
and the premature death of the bread-winner, would con- 
stitute a stronger force to direct towards savings an extra 
thousand pounds of wages, than would the corresponding 
desire on the part of the single employer, in the matter of 
an extra thousand pounds of profits? That this would be 
so in France or Germany, would not, I think, be questioned 
by any Frenchman or German. If it should not prove so 
in England, it would be in no small degree due to the fact 
that the tenure of the land, the true savings banks of the 
people, has been so much embarrassed by statute and by 
judicial fictions. 

It should, of course, be expected that a large and sud- 
den increase of wages, due to general industrial causes like 
that which took place four years ago in the iron and coal ^ 
trades of Great Britain, would, most likely, human nature 
being what it is, be employed in ministering, more or less, 
to folly and vice, or squandered in expenditures, not per- 
haps hurtful in themselves, but unnecessary, and therefore, 
as against a strong reason for saving, mischievous. The 
possible increase of wages which I have in view is rather 
a steady advance due to the increasing mobility of labor 
from the growth of the industrial virtues, enabling th? 

' Coal rose, between July 1871. and February, 1872 in the proportion 
pf 100 to 356, iron following, though at a considerable interval. 



INTEREST AT THE MINIMUM. 231 

wages class to resort more promptly to tlieir market, and 
to press their employers more closely with a truly effective 
competition. Wages thus won would, in general, be well 
employed. 

So much for that desire to make savings as an insurance 
against the contingencies of life and health, which is one 
element of the principle of frugality. Of the other, and 
doubtless more important, element, the desire to secure an 
annual income from investments, or from the personal use 
of capital, it is not necessary to speak here at any length. 
I know no reason for believing that interest in any coun- 
try has reached its minimum, that is, the point where the 
desire to spend overpowers the disposition to save, in such 
a proportion of instances as to waste capital, or to prevent 
it from increasing proportionally to population and to the 
opportunities for its reproductive use at current rates. 



It is quite another question whether it makes any differ- 
ence whether the returns of capital are at the minimum, or 
are very much above that point. I have already * quoted 
a paragraph from Prof. Perry in which he takes the 
ground that if, from any cause, an undue amount of the 
product of industry goes to the share of the capitalist-em- 
ployer, nothing can defeat the tendency that the excess 
shall be restored to wages. Prof. Cairnes, in his " Lead- 
ing Principles," has expressed himself on the same ques- 
tion as follows : 

" Thus, supposing," he says, "a group of employers to 
have succeeded, as no doubt would be perfectly possible 
for them, in temporarily forcing down wages by combina- 
tion in a particular trade, a portion of their wealth previ- 
ously invested would now become free — how would it be 
employed ? Unless we are to suppose the character of a 

> Pp. 81-2, 



238 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

large section of a cominunity to be suddenly changed in a 
leading attribute, the wealth so withdrawn from wages 
would, in the end, and before long, be restored to wages. 
The same motives which led to its investment would lead 
to its reinvestment, and once reinvested, the interests of 
those concerned would cause it to be distributed amongst 
tlie several elements of capital in the same proportion as 
before. In this way covetousness is held in chech hy cov- 
etousness, and the desire for aggrandizement sets limits to 
its own gratification." 

The doctrine here seems to be that the desire for accu- 
mulation, or aggrandizement,^ is a constant force, and thus 
the effects of covetousness, through the employer's efforts 
to give the laborer as little as may be for his services, are 
compensated by the eff'ects of covetousness through the 
employer's eiforts to make a profit on the amount thus 
saved by again employing it in the purchase of labor. 
The motives to investment and reinvestment are therefore 
equal. 

Now it seems to me that this doctrine is inconsistent 
with any recognition of the varying strength of the econo- 
mical motives. While in particular instances, with per- 
sons of the miserly disposition, the passion for accumula- 
tion may grow with increasing wealth, the observation of 
every one must convince him that, with the vast majority 
of men, especially in this age of refinement and of artificial 
wants, the impulse to spend luxuriously acquires force, 
after the comforts and decencies of life are once provided 
for, faster than the impulse to save ; that large incomes 
are not applied as severely and judiciously to further get- 
ting as are moderate incomes ; that the rich expend their 
revenues with a lavishness, a capriciousness and a heed 
lessness which are unknown to men of smaller means. I:' 
this be so, and, with full regard to no inconsiderable nura- 

»P 1.378-9. 



INTEREST AT THE MINIMUM. 23S 

ber of particular instances to the contrary, I do not think 
it will be denied, then the motives to reinvestment cannot 
be held to be necessarily equal to the motives to invest- 
ment ; and instead of covetousness being held in check by 
eovetousness, luxuriousness comes in to consume a portion 
at least of such excessive gains. 

It needs to be noted, moreover, that, upon Prof. Cairnes' 
own doctrine of " non-competing groups,"^ it would not 
follow that the sums thus taken from one body of labor- 
ers in excessive profits will be restored in wages to the 
class or classes suffering such losses. Capital having, on 
Prof. Cairnes' statement, a much higher degree of mobility 
than labor, the body of laborers to be benefited by such 
restoration of profits to wages, will not necessarily, or even 
probably, be identical with that which was in the first in- 
stance depleted. And if a right distribution of the pro- 
ducts of industry be important to secure the highest indus- 
try and zeal in future production, then incontestibly, in 
addition to all considerations of the iniquity of thus bleed- 
ing one class for the benefit of others, we have a strictly 
economic argument against the theory of the practical in- 
difference of the present proportions of wages and profits. 



But we may go further and say that all this kind of 
reasoning in economics which makes the employing or the 
capitalist class, in a state of imperfect competition, the 
guardians of the wages class, in such a way that it really 
doesn't matter whether the laborer gets all the wages he 
might, or even, at any specified time, gets any at all, because 
excessive profits will further enrich those other classes who 
hold their wealth as a sort of sacred trust for him, so that 
at another time he will get all the more, if he gets less or 
nothing now — all this sort of reasoning is much to be dis- 

' See p. 194. 



340 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

trusted. And I cannot sufficiently express my astonish 
ment that an economist of Prof. Cairnes' eminent ability, 
who made the most important contribution ever offered 
in modification of the theory of competition, and who 
pointed out the frightful hiatus in Bastiat's composition of 
the Economical Harmonies,' should have fallen into the 
trap at this point. Anything more contradictory of hia 
own doctrine of the extensive failure of competition, and 
the want of harmony between the interests of the work- 
man and the employer, as each understands his interests 
and is prepared to act with reference thereto, than this 
assumption of the certain restoration to wages of all sums 
taken for excessive profits, it would be impossible to 
conceive. 

It is a poor rule that doesn't work both ways. Tet 
writers who hold it to be of no consequence at all that the 
" capitalists '' should, by pressure brought upon the labor- 
ers, reduce their wages below the equitable point, since 
the extra profits thus acquired are certain to be restored 
to wages, seem to regard it as a subject of just apprehen- 
sion lest laborers should, by trades unions or strikes, bring 
a pressure to bear, on their side, which might reduce 
profits unduly. But why should not such extra wages be 
restored to profits, just as certainly, peacefully, and auto- 
matically ? What difference does it make if the "capital- 
ist," in any given time or place, gets an inadequate profit, 
or indeed no profit at all ? He will only get just so much 
more the next time. Certainly, if the laborer can wait 
to have excessive profits restored to wages, the " capitalist" 
can wait to have extra wages restored to profits. 

This notion of a see-saw between wages and profits is 
well hit-off in a story which Governor Winthrop tells: "1 
may upon this occasion report a passage between one of 
Rowley and his servant. The master being forced to sell 

' See p 164. 



THE LABORER HIS OWIf GUARDIAN. 241 

a pair of oxen to pay his servant his wages, told his ser- 
vant he could keep him no longer, not knowing how to 
pay him the next year. The servant answered him that 
he would serve him for more of his cattle. But how shall 
I do (saith the master) when all my cattle are gone ? The 
servant replied, you shall then serve me, and so you may 
have your cattle again.''^ * Surely, if a man becomes an 
employer in industry, only because he is a capitalist, and 
as he is a capitalist, the servant in this story was not more 
of a wag than of a political economist. 



IN"©, in a state of imperfect competition, the employer is 
not the laborer's guardian, or the trustee of his earnings. 
The workman's legitimate wages are a great deal better 
in his own pocket, or standing in his own name on the 
books of the savings bank, than paid into the hands of the 
employer as extra profits. The reasoning to the contrary, 
on the assumption of a vital harmony of interests, cannot 
fail to remind one of the economical plea, with which it is 
point by point identical, once so widely urged, that the 
owner's interest would abundantly protect the slave against 
physical abuse or privation. It is also closely analogous 
with the political plea by which the privileged classes 
have always sought to show that it really didn't matter 
how much political power was entrusted to them ; that the 
interests of rich and poor, high and low were indissolubly 
bound up together, so that if one suffered, all must suffer 
with it ; and that, therefore, the class most intelligent, 
most apt for government, having most leisure for public 
affairs, with, moreover, the largest stake in society, might 
safely be trusted to make and execute all laws, their own 
true and permanent interests prohibiting them from any 
and every course prejudicial to the lower classes, who 

V . — —m 

> History of New England, II. 219-20. 



243 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

could not, it was urged, be in any way oppressed but that 
social and industrial disorders would aiford immediate 
retribution for the neglect of duty or abuse of power on 
the part of their self-constituted guardians. 

The argument is a very pretty one, but alas ! and alas ! 
what a dreary and sickening tale is that of the exactions 
and oppressions of the Old Regime ! There is no class lit 
to determine its own riglits and prescribe the duties of 
others. Inevitably will tyranny be engendered, whenever 
there is weakness or helplessness on the one side. Noblesse 
oblige ; and the sentiments of compassion and charity go 
far to mitigate the natural severity of legislation and 
administration ; but, after all, there is only one way in 
which the rights of any body of men can be secured, and 
that is by being placed in tha^r own keeping. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE EMPIiOTING CLASS : THE ENTREPEB17EUR IXTNCTION 
THE PROFITS OF BUSINESS. 

"We have seen (Chapter I.) that muoh confusion has been 
introdneed into the theory of wages by the economists 
carrying the classification which results from their analy- 
sis of functions in production over into the distribution of 
wealth, assuming, it would seem, that industrial functions 
must needs characterize distinct industrial classes. We 
have seen that, in fact, the laborer and the capitalist are 
largely the same person ; and that no division of the pro- 
duct into shares, representing the claims of different par- 
ties, in such cases takes place. We have now to note a 
further source of error in the almost universal neglect by 
the text-book writers to make acconnt of an industrial 
function which, while, the world over and history through, 
it characterizes a class no more ^ than labor or capital, does 
yet, in the most highly organized forms of industry, espe- 
cially in these modern times, characterize a distinct and a 
most important class. This class comprises the modern 
employers of labor, men of business, " captains of indus- 
try." It is much to be regretted that we have not a single 
English word which exactly fits the person who performs 
this ofiice in modern industry. The word " undertaker," 

' Thus the peasant proprietor takes all the responsibilities of pro 
duction, determines its courses and its methods, and acts, so to speak, 
as the entrepreneur in respect to his own little affairs, at the same 
time owning the capital employed and performing all the labor. 



844 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

the man who undertakes, at one time had very much this 
extent ; but it has long since been so exchisively devoted 
to funereal uses as to become an impossible term in politi- 
cal economy. The word "adventurer," the man whc 
makes ventures, also had this sense ; but in modern par- 
lance it has acquired a wholly sinister meaning. The 
French word " entrepreneur" has very nearly the desired 
Bignificance ; and it may be that the exigencies of politico- 
economical reasoning will yet lead to its being naturalized 
among ns. 

This function, then, of the man of business, middleman, 
undertaker, adventurer, entrepreneur, employer, requires 
to be carefully discriminated. 

The economists, almost without exception, have regarded 
capital and labor as together sufficient unto production, 
the capitalist being the employer, the laborer being the 
employed. It may fairly be presumed that the failure to 
recognize a third party to production, the middleman, has 
been due in part to the fact that these writers have been 
accustomed to take their illusti-ations of the offices of labor 
and capital from the savage state, or at least from a very 
primitive condition of industry. The bow, the spear, the 
canoe, are the favorite subjects when it is to be shown 
how it is that the results of labor may pass into the form 
of capital ; how it is that capital may assist current labor; 
and how it is that a reward can be given to capital out of 
the product of industry without any wrong being done to 
the laborer. And it is true that when the forms of pro- 
duction are few and simple, and when the producer and 
the consumer are either the same person, or are found in 
close proximity, the possession of capital is the one suffi- 
cient qualification for the employment of labor ; and, on the 
other hand, a supply of food and of tools and materials is 
all that labor needs to institute production. 

But when, in the development of industry, the forms of 
production become almost infinitely numerous and corapli 



THE EMPLOYING CLASS. 244 

cated ; when many persons of all degrees of skill and 
strength must be joined in labor, each in his place contri- 
buting to a result which he very imperfectly, if at all, com- 
prehends ; when the materials to be used are brought from 
distant fields, and the products are in turn to be scattered 
by the agencies of commerce over vast regions, the con- 
sumers constituting an ill-defined or an undefined body, 
personally unknown to the producer or any immediate 
agent of his ; then a reason for an employer exists which is 
wholly in addition to that which exists in a primitive con- 
dition of industry. The mere possession of capital no 
longer constitutes the one qualification for employing labor ; 
and, on the other hand, the laborer no longer looks to the 
employer to furnish merely food and the materials and 
tools of the trade; but to furnish also technical skill, com- 
mercial knowledge, and powers of administration ; to as- 
sume responsibilities and provide against contingencies ; to 
shape and direct production, and to organize and control 
the industrial machinery. And, moreover, so much more 
important and difiicult are the last specified duties of the 
employer; so much rarer are the abilities they require, 
that he who can perform these will find it easy to perform 
those ; if he be the man to conduct business, capital to 
purchase food, tools, and materials will not, under our 
modern system of credit, long be wanting to him. On the 
other hand, without these higher qualifications, the capi- 
talist will employ labor at the risk, or almost the certainty, 
of total or partial loss. The employer thus rises to be 
master of the situation. It is no longer true that a man 
becomes an employer because he is a capitalist. Men 
command capital because they have the qualifications to 
profitably employ labor. To these, captains of industry, 
despots of industry, if one pleases to call them so, capital 
and labor alike resort for the opportunity to perform theii 
several functions. I do not mean that the employer is not 
in any case, or to any extent, a capitalist ; but that he is 



246 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

not an employer simply because he is a capitalist, or t« 
the extent only to which he is a capitalist. 

Now all this is evident to any man who looks carefall} 
on our modern industry. Yet the economists, having 
made their analysis of production in a primitive state 
wholly neglect these later developed duties of the em 
ployer, this new and far higher function ; and insist on 
regarding the capitalist as himself the employer. Thej 
resolve the entire industrial community into capitalists 
and laborers ;i and divide the whole product between the 
two. To the contrary, I hold that no theory of the dis- 
tribution of wealth, in modern industry, can be complete 
which fails to make account of the employing class, as dis- 
tinguished in idea, and largely also iu its personnel, from 
the capitalist class. 

It would, I admit, be difficult to prove the importance 
of the entrepreneur function in industry, just as it would 
be difficult by argument to establish in the mind of an 
objector, a true conception of the functions of the general 
in war. Those who know nothing about M-arfare might 
believe that campaigns could be conducted on the principle 
of popular rights and universal suffrage. Why not? 
There is the materiel of war (capital) in abundance ; here 
are the soldiers (laborei's), who, if any fighting is to be 
done, will have to do the whole of it ; why should not 
these soldiers take those guns, and do their work ? In 
much the same way, those who know little practically 
about production are easily persuaded that the trouble- 
some and expensive " captain of industry" may be dis- 
pensed with, and his place occupied by a committee or a 
mass meeting. 

1 " The ultimate partners in any production may be divided into 
two classes, capftalists and laborers. ... If the distributor be the 
capitalist, the share of the laborer is called wages. If the distributor 
be the laborer, the share of the capitalist is called either interest c 
rent." — Hearn's Plutology, pp. 325-7. 



TEE EMPLOYING GLASS. 247 

We have had but few instances of actual attempts tc 
conduct campaigns on the town-meeting plan, the most 
notable, perhaps, being the crusade of Walter the Penni- 
less and the iirst Bull Run ; but there have been numerous 
efforts made to get rid of the entrepreneur, and it is in the 
ahnost universal failure of such efforts that we have the 
highest evidence of the importance of this functionary in 
modern industry. Cooperation,^ which is nothing more 
or less than the doing away with the middleman, has 
several distinct advantages, of vast scope, in production ; 
yet these have been weighed down again and again, even 
under conditions most favorable to the experiment, by the 
losses resulting from the suspension of the employing 
function. Let those who resolve the industrial community 
into capitalists and laborers only, and divide the whole 
product between these two classes, explain, if they can, 
the failures of cooperation. 

It has been said that the omission of the economists to 
recognize the employers as a distinct class in modern in- 
dustry, is presumably due, in part, to the tendency to go 
back to the savage, or to a very primitive state, for illus- 
trations of the nature and offices of labor and capital. 
But I believe that it is also in part due to the fact that 
the real employing class is covered up, more or less, from 
casual view, by what may be called a false employing 
class, many times more numerous. This false employing 
class, as I make bold to call it, is composed of several con- 
siderable bodies of so-called employers. 

1. Those who hire servants or retain assistants who are 
to be paid out of revenues already acquired. Reasons 
have already^ been assigned for removing persons so en- 
gaged or employed from the wages class, and treating 
them by themselves as the "salary or stipend class.'' Of 

* A wholly erroneous conception of cooperation, due to the neglecl 
of the entrepreneur-function, is exposed on page 264. 
^ P. 215. 



248 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

course, the same reasons require the rbmoval of theii 
masters or patrons from the lists of the employing class 
If we were to consider the domestic servants, alone, oi 
England and the United States, we should find the sO' 
called employers to be far more numerous than those whc 
pay wages to laborers whom they hire for profit. No 
wonder that when those who are paid out of revenue are 
confounded with those who are paid out of the product of 
their labor, the inclusion of the masters of the former 
class should obstruct the view of the far less numerous 
employers of the latter class. 

2. In this false employing class are large numbers of 
artisans who have single apprentices. Such an artisan 
might, for instance, earn $500 a year by his own unassisted 
labor, while his gains by the apprentice's services might 
be $50. So far, doubtless, he is an employer of labor, and 
his gains are entitled, on a nice judgment of the case, to 
be called " profits ; " but those bear so small a proportion 
to his other source of income, and he is, in his capacity of 
employer, of so little account, that we cannot afford to be 
encumbered by carrying him on as the employer of a third 
or a fifth part of an able laborer. A single cotton manu- 
facturer or iron master may employ a thousand times, or 
five thousand times, as much effective labor. It is of more 
importance that we should see the cotton n.anufacturer 
and the iron master in their true relations to the great body 
of labor seeking employment, than that we should trouble 
ourselves about the economical status of the fraction of a 
laborer who is perhaps, at present, spoiling more material 
than his work is worth. The principle of the law, de mini- 
7nis non curatur, applies with even greater force in politi- 
cal economy. What we need in studying the problem of 
distribution is not a nice theoretical classification, but a 
just and strong exhibition of the great groups of our mod 
ern industrial society .^ 

' For remarks of Prof. Cairiies regarding the office of economic de 

(iuition, see page 218. 



THE FALSE EMPLOYING GLASS. 34S 

3. Another large body which we need to exclude, tem- 
porarily, at least, from the employing class, in order that 
we may get a proper view of its real constitution, is that 
where the condition is one of nominal employment but of 
substantial partnership. This includes a great number of 
cases where two men, or perhaps three, of a trade, approxi- 
mately equal in skill and experience, the work of the one 
being merely a repetition of the work of the other, labor 
together at the bench, one being recognized as the master, 
the other receiving wages ; yet where the reason for one 
being the employer and the other the employed is so 
slight, the equality of skill and experience so well main- 
tained, the character and the profits of the business so 
well understood by him who receives wages, and the 
ability of that person to set up for himself so evident, that 
the employer virtually becomes little more than the senior 
member of a partnership where the nominal wages and 
terms of service are scaled to give a substantial equality of 
remuneration, with some slight compensation to the senior 
member for extra trouble and responsibility. 

4. There remains to be characterized a fourth class of 
persons to whom I do not wish to deny the title of em- 
ployer, but whom it is desirable for the moment to isolate, 
those, namely, who, having mistakenly become by occupa- 
tion the employers of labor, through helplessness or false 
pride cling to the skirts of the profession, and remain in 
a small and miserable way conductors of industry, follow- 
ing humbly and at a distance the example of leading 
houses; content, in flush times, to make a little profit on a 
little product, using generally antiquated machinery, con- 
suming materials of doubtful quality, and making a low 
class of goods, but shutting up promptly on the first inti- 
niation of hard times, or just so soon as competition be- 
comes close and persistent. Numerically the men of this 
class constitute a considerable proportion of every trade ; 
but if we consider the aggregate product, their part is com- 
paratively slight. 



850 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

I do not mean to embrace in this class any mannfactnrei 
merely because his establishment is a small one. It would 
be easy to show that in some departments of productiou, 
perhaps in most, petty establishments fill a place, take up 
a certain amount of labor not otherwise employed (as, for 
instance, the labor of the wives and daughters of agricul- 
turists in the immediate neighborhood), find a distinct 
market to which, in a homely but useful way, they adapt 
themselves perhaps better than the monster factory can do. 
The commerce of the world requires not only the ship of 
5,000 tons, but the schooner, the lighter, and the dorj'. 

Yet of no small part of these petty establishments which 
make short runs from point to point between storm and 
squall, it may be boldly asserted that i\\ey answer no true 
industrial purpose. Their only raison d'etre is found in 
the fact that their proprietors, having committed them- 
selves to the profession of the entrepreneur, having come 
into the possession of a certain amount of the machinery 
and agencies of production, and being unable to betake 
themselves, at the point of life they have reached, to an- 
other occupation, or being unwilling to so openly confess 
failure, can pick up a very poor living in this way. And 
of emi>loyers of this sort, it is significant to note, laborers 
are not apt to be jealous. They are known to have a 
pretty hard time of it. Their lot is not envied, and they 
commonly receive the sj-mpathy of the general comnmnity 
and of their hands ; while the successful captain of indus- 
try, who amasses a giant fortune, is regarded by not a few 
as having despoiled the laboring class. Yet it is incon- 
testable that the profits of the former constitute by far the 
heavier tax, dollar for dollar, upon the product of labor. 
Nothing costs the working classes so dearly, in the long 
run, as the bad or merely commonplace conduct of 
business. 



THE REAL EMPLOYING GLASS. 251 

Puttins: aside for the moment the several classes enu- 
merated, we have plainly in view the real employing class 
of our modern industrial society : a comparatively small 
body of men, who control the destinies of labor no more 
than they do the destinies of capital. These men consti- 
tute a class strictly limited in numbers, and dealing most 
despotically, as indeed they must, with the outside world. 
Tlie conditions of admission are a long self -initiation, a 
high premium of immediate loss, and a great degree of 
uncertainty as to ultimate success. Into this guild, in 
these modern days, no aspirant for profits needs to be 
inducted with ceremonies, or first invited by the existing 
membership. All are in theory free to enter ; but the 
number who venture is closely restricted by the known 
conditions of business. Those only undertake it who are 
able, or, like the rowers of Mnestheus, think they are able, 
to sustain the ordeal of fierce and unrelenting competition ; 
while those who have the courage to venture are contin- 
ually sifted by commercial and industrial pressures and 
panics, so that only the fittest survive. 

I have no wish to idealize the successful employer of 
labor. He may easily be found to be a very unamiable 
and a very uninteresting person. For the perfect temper 
of business something doubtless of hardness is needed, just 
as it is the alloy of baser metal which fits the gold for cir- 
culating in the hands of men. A little too much sensi- 
bility or a little too much imagination, is often a sufficient 
cause of failure in the stern competitions of business. The 
successful entrepreneur need not even understand the 
theory of trade, or be a financier in the larger sense of that 
word. A kind of subtle instinct often directs the move- 
ments of the ablest merchants, bankers, and manufacturers. 
They know that the market is about to experience a con- 
vulsion, because they know it ; just as the cattle know 
that a storm is brewing. They not only could not give 
reasons intelligible to others for the course they take ; thej 



852 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

do not even analyze their intellectual processes for theii 
own satisfaction. 

It is not necessary to draw the outlines of the represen- 
tative entrepreneur. Living illustrations will rise before 
the mind of every reader, far more vivid than any art of 
mine could execute. M. Courcelle-Seneuil, in his Opera- 
tions de Banqiie, has grouped the qualities the employer 
should possess : " du jugement, du bon sens, de la fermete, 
de la decision, une appreciation froide et calme, une intel- 
ligence ouverte et vigilante, peu d'imagination, beaucoup 
de memoire et d'application." * 

I said that the real employing class is comparatively 
small. I do not speak alone of those employing workmen 
by the thousand or the ten thousand, or even of those 
alone whose pay-rolls count up hundreds of hands.'' If 
we go down to the captains of fifties and the captains of 
tens, it still remains true that the bulk of the wage-labor 
of England, France, Germany, and the United States, is 
controlled by a small, choice band of men, who are masters 
in industry because, whatever be their social quality, in 
industry they are masterly. To call these men the creat- 
ures of their workmen, and speak of ^ the sums they exact 
in royalty on all the business which passes through theii 
hands, as " the wages of supervision and management," 
seems to me as idle a fiction as it would have been to cal' 
the seigniors under the Old Regime the social representa- 
tives of the tiers etat, and to speak of the sums thej' 
lavished in pomp and pleasure, as their " allowances." 

Are profits already at the minimum, so that we may 

» P. 392. 

* Thus, even in Austria, one of the most backward of European 
countries in the organization of industry, we find that 493 employers 
provide lodging for not less than 59,343 workmen. In France, Messrs. 
Schneider & Co. (" Le Creusot ") employ 10,000 workmen. Anzin 
employs 15,000 under a single direction. At the great cannon foundry 
of Krupp, at Essen in Westphalia, between 8,000 and 10,000 are 
employed. In Great Britain, like gigantic establishments abourd. 



ABE PROFITS AT THE MINIMUM? 253 

not look to see an increase of wages obtained from this 
source ? Much of what has been said relative to the 
asserted restoration to wao^es, of all sums which mav sro in 
excessive returns to capital, applies equally in the case of 
excessive profits, the remuneration of the man of business, 
the employer, the entrepreneur. It cannot safely be 
assumed that, to use Prof. Cairnes' phrase," covetousness 
be held in check by covetousness, inasmuch as luxurious- 
ness w^ill inevitably enter to absorb a portion of such 
undue gains. But here still another reason appears, 
namely, that, as the part of the employer in production ia 
active ; not abstinence, as in the case of the capitalist, but 
exertion ; in addition, then, to tlie effects of luxuriousness, 
excessive profits will, with no small proportion of employ- 
ers, allow the native propensity to indolence and ease of 
life to enter to take something from the zeal and enter- 
prise with which business is conducted. It is only the 
exceptionally ambitious and resolute who will wholly 
withstand this propensity. So that when Prof. Perry 
says, " If, in the division between profits and wages, at 
the end of any industrial cycle, profits get more than their 
due share, these very profits will wish to become capital, 
and will thus become an extra demand for labor, and the 
next wages fund will be larger than the last," ^ I am 
obliged to take the exception that a portion of these 
profits, so far as Prof. Perry includes in that term the 
gains of the man of business, will wish to become fine 
horses and houses, fine clothes and opera boxes ; w^hile 
another portion will wish to take the form of coming to 
the office an hour later in the morning and going home 
an hour earlier in the afternoon. 

Hence, if we cannot safely assume that it is a matter ol 
indifference to the wages class whether a little more orles? 
goes in profits to the employer, it becomes of importance 

' P 238. 
The Financier, August 1, 1874. 



254 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

to inquire whether there is any reason to believe that pro 
tits are already at the minimum. And as to this, one can 
have no hesitation in saying that the probabilities are 
strongly against such a supposition. The present average 
rate of profits, or annual aggregate of profits, has noto- 
riously been reached as the result of unequal competition, 
■n which employers have been active, alert, and mobile, 
while laborers have been, in a great degree, ignorant and 
inert, resorting to the right market tardily, or mistakenly 
to the wrong market. It does not follow that because the 
laborers have lost heavily by this failure of competition, 
the employers have gained it all. Much has been lost 
to the laborers and to the world. Nowhere does the 
monopolist gain all that others lose by him. Yet the em- 
ploying class have profited, and still profit, greatly by this 
partial immobility of labor. The lowest price which any 
laborer will receive for his services is no longer the highest 
price which any employer can afiford to give. 

In the first part of this work, when treating of produc- 
tion, I had occasion to show that the wages of the laborer 
might be increased in several ways without diminishing 
profits, the explanation being that the laborer's efficiency 
will be increased proportionally or more than proportion- 
ally. In dealing with the problem of Distribution, the 
laborer's efficiency will be assumed constant, and I shall 
inquire what causes may operate to increase the laborer's 
share of the product, not the absolute amount of his wages. 

And, first, let it be noted that a gain might be effected 
through a reduction in what may be called the cost of em- 
ployment, without involving any reduction in the aggre- 
gate profits of employers as a body. Let me illustrate: J 
was much struck at the complaints made at some of the 
meetings of agricultural laborers in England during the 
lockout of 18T4, that many of the employers were hard- 
drinking men and poor farmers, and that if they attended 
more closelj^ to their business and managed it better, they 



INCOMPETENT EMPLOYERS. m 

conld afford to pay higher wages. Now no one should 
lightly credit the complaints of angry men ; nor was there 
any reason to suppose that the farmers of the lockout sec- 
tion comprised more than the usual proportion of dissolute 
and negligent employers. What occurs to me as notice- 
able in this matter is the correctness with which these 
laborers apprehended the principle that when men who 
are nnfit to conduct business force themselves into the 
employment of labor, it is at the expense of labor. The 
theory of competition assumes the intelligence and capacity 
of the employer to see and follow his own interests.^ 
His doing this is (assuming the mobility of labor) to be 
the very means by which the laborer's interest is secured. 
If the employer fails in this requirement of intelligence 
and capacity, it may be not the better but the worse for 
the laborer. Bad business management is the heaviest 
possible tax on production, and while the incapable em- 
ployer gets little for himself, the laborer loses heavily in 
the rate or the regularity of his wages. 

Now, several causes may help to swell the proportion 
of incapable employers. Shilly-shally laws relating to 
insolvency do this ; fictitious currency does this ; truck 
does this.^ Each of these causes enables men to escape 

' Errors in directing production are never offset one against another, 
as mistakes in computation so often are with a result of substantial 
accuracy. Whether the employer err in being too timid or too ven- 
turesome, loss is alike sustained, an injury is suffered which is with- 
out compensation. There is no balancing of one mistake against 
another in industry. 

It is needless tc say that the employer is almost always either too 
timid or too venturesome. The perfect temper of business, we might 
suppose, is found in no living man. But the sterner the responsibility 
to which the employer is held, the more steady and severe the compe- 
tition to which he is subjected, the nearer will be the approach to this 
ideal, the less will be the waste in production due to mis-direction of 
tlie industrial force. 

^ The evidence before tlie Committee of 1854 brought out strongly 
this feature of the truck system ; that it was chiefly resorted to by 



256 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

the consequences of incompetency, and to hang miserably 
on to business, where they are an obstruction and a 
nuisance. Any thing which should decisively cut them 
off, and remit them to subordinate positions, would be a 
great gain to the laboring classes, and very likely, in the 
result, prove a real relief to themselves. Slavery, in like 
manner, enables men to control labor and direct produc- 
tion who never would become, on an equal scale, the 
employers of free labor ; and it is not more to the ineffi- 
ciency of the slave than to the incompetency of the 
master, that the unproductiveness of chattel labor is due. 

The lower the industrial quality of free labor, the more 
ignorant and inert the individual laborer, the lower may 
be the industrial quality of the men who can just sustain 
themselves in the position of employer. Men become the 
employers of cheap labor who would never be the employ- 
ers of dear labor, and who ought not to be the employers 
of any sort of labor. Thie more active becomes the com- 
petition among the wages class, the more prompt their 
resort to market, the more persistent their demand for 
every possible increase of remuneration, the greater will 
be the pressure brought to bear upon such employers to 
drop out of the place into which they have crowded them- 
selves at the cost of the general community, and where 
they have been able to maintain themselves only because 
the working classes have failed, through ignorance and 
inertness, to exact their full terms. 

But, secondly, a rise of wages due to a quickened com- 
petition on the part of the wages class, might be to a very 
great extent compensated i>y increased zeal, energy, and 

email and doubtful establishments which thus contrived to make up, 
by "sweating" the wages of their operatives, what they could not 
make in legitimate profits, and thus kept themselves alive. Indeed, 
the excuse most frequently urged by truck masters was that, but for 
gains thus realized, they would be obliged to give up business. It \s 
needless to say that the sooner such employers are driven out, the 
better for the laboring class. 



EMPLOYERS ON THEIR METTLE. 25? 

economy on the part of the really able men of business. 
It does no man good to have much odds given him ; and 
the inertness of labor has always a mischievous eifect even 
upon the best of the employing class. So far as the 
increasing demands of the laborer are due to his greater 
vigilance, activity, and social ambition, we may be pretty 
sure that these demands will be responded to fully by the 
entrepreneur. Whether we consider business on its side 
of enterprise, or on its side of economy, we shall find that 
it does the manager no harm to be sharply followed up. 
Where large margius are afforded, there is likely to be 
much waste ; and, on the other hand, no man does his 
best except when his best is required. " It was an axiom 
of the late Mr. John Kennedy, who was called the father 
of the cotton manufacture, that no manufacturing im- 
provements were ever made except on threadbare profits." 
Mr. Babbage, in his Economy of Manufactures,' has 
shown that inventions and improvements in the mechan- 
ical arts have sometimes been healthfully stimulated by 
the goadings of industrial distress; and Mr. Chadwick has 
given an interesting exposition ^ of the manner in which 
the increasing pressure of competition has served to pro- 
mote the commercial ventures which have successively 
widened the market for British manufactures. But surely 
we need no "modern instances" to establish a principle 
so old and familiar. The weighty words of Gibbon : " the 
spirit of monopolists is barren, lazy, and oppressive," 
apply to all production in just the degree in which com- 
petition is defeated or deferred, whether by the force of 
law, or by the ignorance and inertness of the laboring 
classes. 

Perhaps as good an illustration as could be given of the 
efiects of increased competition in winnowing the employ- 
ing class of its least efficient members, and stimulating 

* P. 294. 1 Statistical Journal, xxviii. 3-5. 



S68 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

the enterprise and the economy of those who survive the 
process, is afforded by the course of English agriculture 
since the repeal of the Corn Laws, a measure which the 
landed interest believed at the time would be absolutely 
fatal, and which, indeed, wouki have ruined tliat interest 
but for the saving virtue of the forces here invoked. Yet 
English ao^riculture never stood on a better foundation 
than to-day : the gains of the farmer probably were never 
larger through an equal term of years. The reason is 
tliat the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the opening of 
English markets to the bread-stuiFs of the world, put the 
agricultural interest on its mettle ; the farmers found that 
they must abandon the old clumsy and wasteful ways ; 
break up the old clumsy and wasteful machinery ; pay 
higher wages for better work ; breed only from the choicest 
stock ; make improvements in every process of cultivation, 
from selecting the seed to garnering the grain ; lind some 
chance for saving, every day, from harvest round to har- 
vest again, and that, too, without pinching useful expend- 
itures. These things the farmers of England had to do, 
and consequentl}' did them. The less energetic and 
thrifty, one by one, dropped out of a contest so severe and 
unremitting ; those who survived studied their business 
as never before, scanned their expenses as men do who 
have small margin for waste, brought the latest results of 
chemical and physiological science into their selection of 
crops and of breeding animals, made a business, and not a 
drinking bout, of the annual fair, set up agricultural clubs, 
compared notes among themselves, and read Mr. Caird's 
letters in the Times. 

But, thirdly, a rise of wages due to a quickened compe- 
tition on the part of the wages class become more intelli- 
gent, frugal, and self-assertive, should it proceed so far, 
ftfter exhausting the two resources already named, as to 
cut into the profits of the employing class, as a whole, 
would bring a partial compensation in the increased dig- 



EMPLOYERS PARTLY PAID IN HONOR. 259 

nity and the heightened intellectual gratification attend- 
ing the conduct of business and the control of labor, under 
such a condition. I have said, in a previous chapter, that 
the pride of directing great operations, and the sense of 
power in moving masses of men at will, could not, at 
present at least, be relied upon, primarily or principally, 
as furnishing the motive to production on the part of the 
employing class. And yet we know these do enter, in no 
inconsiderable degree, to make up the remuneration of 
tlie entrepreneur. It is true that but a small portion of 
the human race are much alive to these feelings, but it 
is also true that the men of the entrepreneur stamp are 
just those of all in the world to respond to such im- 
pulses.^ 

We have a very pleasant and instructive picture, by 
Mr. Gould in his report to the British government in 
18Y2, of the relations existing between the employer and 
the laborer, in Switzerland. JSTo country has achieved 
industrial success under heavier disadvantages. No conti- 
nental country has developed a higher order of business 
managers. The Swiss employers maintain themselves 
against a severe and unremitting competition only by tht 
constant exercise of all the industrial virtues. But the 
Swiss laborers are politically and socially their equals. 
The employer has no feeling of degradation in the contact : 
the laborer no feeling of inferiority. Perfect democracy 
and universal education have cast out all notions of that 
sort as between free Switzers. Hence the employers of 
labor of every class, even such as are wealthy, are found 
in general among their men, not to be distinguished from 

* " As, even when relieved from the pressure of necessity, the 
large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter on enterprises or activities 
which the savage could not keep up, even to satisfy urgent wants ; 
so their larger brained descendants will, in a still higher degree, find 
their gratification in careers entailing still greater mental expendi- 
tures — H. Spencer, Principles of Biology, II. 520. 



2G0 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

them in appearance, and taking hold freely with them at 
any part of the work, as occasion serves.^ 

I cannot but believe that, as the working classes advance 
in individual and mutnal intelligence, and push their em- 
ployers closer with a more searching and vital competition, 
more and more will the reward of the employer come to 
consist of tlie zest of intellectual activity, the joys of 
creative energ}^ the honor of directing affairs, and the 
social distinctions of mastership. 

For after all, it must be remembered that the employ- 
ment of labor is an occupation, as truly as is manual labor 
itself; and that the body of employers must continue to 
employ labor, or find other ways and means to live. To 
assume that employers generally are going to leave busi- 
ness on account of a reduction of profits, would be more 
sensible if it were shown that they would also leave the 
world on that account. Not a little of the reasoning in 
books as to what employers will do, or capitalists will do, 
or laborers will do, if something happens which they can- 
not be expected to like, practically assumes that men have 
a choice whether they will be born into this world or not ; 
and that, once in it, if they are not satisfied, they have at 
hand one or more eligible spheres into which they can 
pass, easily and gracefully, with a perfect assurance of 
welcome; and that indeed they will be quite likely to do 
so, unless treated with distinguished consideration here. 

' Mr. Gould's Report, p. 346. Mr. Bonar reported, in 1870 : "In 
enumerating the highly favorable circumstances in which the Swiss 
working man is placed, prominence must be given to the immense 
extension of the principle of democracy, which, whatever may be its 
defects and dangers from a political point of view, when pushed to 
extremes, serves in Switzerland, in its economical effects, to advance 
the cause of the operative, by removing the barriers dividing class 
from class, and to establish among all grades the bonds of mutual 
sympathy and good will." — Report, p. 271. Coxe, in his travels in 
Switzerland during the last century, notes the frank, courteous aa 
sumption of absolute equality on the part of the Swiss peasantry.— 
(Pinkerton, V. 657). 



THE EMPLOYING CLASS. 261 

Whereas, the most of us, in this world, do, not what we 
would like, but what we must, or the best we can ; and 1 
entertain no manner of doubt that long after profits should 
be forced down, if that were to happen, below what might 
be deemed an equitable rate, the superior men of everj 
country, the men of thought, of prudence, and of natural 
command, would be found directinj? and animating the 
movements of industi^y. 



OUAFTEli XV 

COOPERATION : GETTING RID OF THE EMPLOYING OLA88. 

In its first and largest sense, cooperation signifies the 
union in production of difierent persons, it may be of 
different classes of persons, and it may be on the most 
unequal terms. In this sense, cooperation is compatible 
with the subordination of the employed to the employer 
and with the existence of industrial " principalities and 
powers." In the sense which has been made of late years 
so popular, and in which alone it will be used in this 
treatise, cooperation means union in production, upon 
equal terms. It is democracy introduced into labor. 

It is as we turn from discussing the industrial character 
of the employing class, that we can most advantageously 
consider the schemes proposed, under the title of coopera- 
tion, for the amelioration of the condition of the wages 
class; and, at the same time, it is as we try to find the 
real significance of these schemes that we realize most 
fully the confusion introduced into the theory of distribu- 
tion by the failure to discriminate the entrepreneur-func- 
tion, and by the undue extension of the word profits. In 
my opinion, it is simply not possible to give an intelligible 
account of cooperation through the use of the definitions 
by the text-book writers. If what we have called the 
profits of business are only " the wages of supervision and 
management," what is it that cooperation aims to effect ? 
Supervision and management must still be exercised, oi 
cooperation will come to a very speedy end. If super 



COOPERATION. 263 

vision and management are to be exercised, it must be by 
some one, and if the present supervisors and managers 
(the employers, as I call them) are to be turned adrift or 
reduced to the ranks, then these duties will have to be 
performed by men now taking some other part in indus- 
try, and to them " the wages of supervision and manage- 
ment" will be paid. Wherein have the workmen gained 
anything ? It is fairly to be presumed that these peculiar 
and difficult duties will not be performed any better by 
men chosen by caucus and ballot, than by men selected 
through the stern processes of unremitting business com- 
petition. 

If the wages of supervision and management are to be 
paid, in manner and in amount, as heretofore, to super- 
visors and managers chosen by the workmen themselves, 
we can readily understand that the pride of the workmen 
may be gratified (whether that will tend to make them 
more easily supervised and managed, is a question we 
need not anticipate); but wherein is the economical advan- 
tage I If it is said, wages are not to be paid to the super 
visors and managers, under the cooperative system, equa. 
to those paid under the existing industrial organization, 
while yet the work is done as well, what does this amount 
to but a confession that the sums now received by the 
employers are not wages, but something more than, and 
different from, wages; the difference in amount represent- 
ing the power given to X\\q employer by his industrial 
position to wrest an undue share of the products of in- 
dustrj'^ ? 

To repeat : if, under the cooperative system, the work 
of " supervision and management " is to be done by a new 
*et of men for the same " wages," the workmen will gain 
nothing ; if, on the other hand, the workmen, controlling 
the operations of industry for themselves, can get the 
work done for less (and the great promises held out as to 
the benefits of cooperation would imply that it must be 



264 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

for very much less), then it must be concluded that em 
plojers at present receive something more than and differ- 
ent from wages. 

But if we find it difficult to conceive what account one 
could give of cooperation, using the definitions of the 
text-books, we find that, if we stand aside and allow the 
text-book writers to state it in their own way, the result is 
not a whit the more happy. Prof. Cairnes, so highly dis- 
tinguished for his justness and clearness of reasoning, 
stumbles, at the very threshold of the subject, across an 
obstacle of his own devising. Thus in the very act of 
bringing forward the scheme of cooperation as a cure for 
the industrial ills of society, he makes a statement of 
cooperation which reduces it to a nullity: "It appears to 
me that the condition of any substantial improvement of a 
permanent kind in the laborer's lot is that the separation 
of industrial classes into laborers and capitalists shall not 
be maintained ; that the laborer shall cease to be a mere 
laborei' — in a word, that profits shall be brought to reen- 
force the wages fundy ^ And again, more tersely : " The 
characteristic feature of cooperation, looked at from the 
economic point of view, is that it comhines in the same 
person the two capacities of laborer and capitalist^ ' 
This needs but to be looked at a moment to reveal its 
utter fallacy. Kemember, this is not the declaration of an 
irresponsible philanthropist that every workman ought to 
have a palace and a coach, but 1?he grave statement of an 
accountable economist as to the manner in which the wel 
fare of the working class may, under economical condi- 



* " Some Leading Principles," etc., p. 339. 

• " Essays on Political Economy." How singularly unfortunate 
this would be as a definition, even were Prof. Cairnes not mistaken in 
his general view of cooperation, will be seen when we say that the 
above would be a very good description of a peasant proprietor, or 
email American farmer. He "combines in the same person the two 
capacities of laborer and capitalist." Is he a coiiperator? 



GETTING BID OF THE ENTREPRENEUR. 263 

tions, be advanced. "What is this industrial panacea! 
Why, the laborers are to become capitalists. A raost 
felicitous result truly; but how is it to be accomplished? 
By saving their own earnings ? But this they can and do 
accomplish at present ; and, through the medium of the 
bank of savings, they ma}'^ and do lend their money in 
vast amounts to the employing class (oftentimes to their 
individual employers), and thus, under the present system 
profits (in Prof. Cairnes' sense) may be and are " brought 
to reenforce" wages. Is it, then, by saving somebody 
else's earnings, and bringing the profits thereof to " reen- 
force the wages fund " ? But this is spoliation, confiscation, 
a resort which no one would be before Prof. Cairnes in 
denouncing, and whose disastrous consequences to the 
laborers themselves no one could more forcibly portray. 

We see, therefore, that Prof. Cairnes' statement is a 
form utterly without content. Cooperation is to be an 
admirable thing, because in cooperation the workmen are 
to be both laborers and capitalists. But if we inquire 
how they are to become capitalists, otherwise than at 
present, we fail to find an answer. 

No ! Cooperation, considered as a question in the dis 
tribution of wealth, is nothing more or less than getting 
rid of the employer, the entrepreneur, the middleman. 
It does not get rid of the capitalist. In modern industrial 
society, that society which Prof. Cairnes is contemplating 
when he finds the condition of the workman hard and 
requiring relief, there are three functions, not two merely ; 
and the reform to be effected through cooperation, if 
indeed cooperation be practicable, is by combining in the 
lame person, not the labor function and the capital func- 
tion, but the labor function and the entrepreneur function. 



What then is the attitude of laborers in cooperation ? 
To the employer they say: You have performed an ira- 



266 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

portant part in production, and you have performed it 
well ; but you are now relieved. You have charged too 
high for your services. Your annual profits, taking good 
years and bad together, are greater than we need to pay 
to get the work done, if we will take the responsibilitiea 
of business on ourselves, and exercise a forethought, 
patience, and pains we have had no call to exercise while 
you were in charge. Up to this time the state of the case 
has been this : 

1. A product, varying with seasons and circumstances 
multifarious. 

2. Our wages, fixed ; you making yourself responsible 
for their payment, whatever be the character of the season 
or the state of the market, yourself receiving nothing till 
we are paid. 

3. From a variable quantity deducting a fixed quantity 
leaves a variable remainder, viz., your profits fluctuating 
with good or bad fortune, good or bad management. 

Hereafter the state of the case will be : 

1. A product, variable, so long as the laws of nature 
remain the same. 

2. A fixed salary paid to a manager whom we select, 
and to whom we make ourselves responsible with what- 
ever we possess, meanwhile receiving nothing till he is 
paid, 

3. From a variable quantity deducting a certain quan- 
tity leaves a variable result : our earnings, no longer 
called wages, greater in good years, smaller in bad years ; 
greater as we labor with zeal and conduct our business 
with discretion, smaller as we fail in either respect. 

One word more before we part. We intend no dis- 
respect. With workmen who are ignorant, dissolute, un- 
willing to subordinate the present to the future, incapable 
of organization, such services as you are qualified to render 
are absohitely indispensable ; and we will not say that 
such remuneration as you exact is excessive. But we pro- 



NATURE OF CO-OPEnATION. 261 

fess better things. "We are prepared to exercise patience, 
industry, economy, and to subject our individual desires 
to the general will, for the sake of dividing among our- 
selves the profits you have been accustomed to make out 
of us.* We know it will be hard ; but we believe it can 
be done. If men are not lit for an industrial republic, 
then they must submit to the despot of industry, and they 
have no right to complain of Civil List and Privy Purse. 
But we are republicans, cheerfully accepting all the re- 
sponsibilities of freedom, and boldly laying claim to all its 
privileges. 

This is, in effect, what the laborers, by cooperation, say 
to the entrepreneur. Do they give the capitalist his 
conge after the same fashion ? Do they assert independ- 
ence of him, and ability to go along without him ? Not 
in the least. Not a word of it. Cooperation is not going 
to rid them of dependence on capital. They are to hi 
just as dependent on the capitalist as were their employers 
whose place they aspire to till. They know that they 
must have just as much and just as good machinery, just 
as abundant and good matei'ials, as competing establish- 
ments under entrepreneur management. So far as they 
themselves have capital, the results of their savings out of 
past wages, they will employ these and receive the returns 
therefrom directly, instead of lending it to the entrepre- 
neur through the savings bank and getting interest there- 
for. So far as they want capital for their operations over 
what they can scrape together, they must go to the banks or 
to private lenders, and pay as high a price for its use as 
their quondam employer was wont to do ; indeed, for 

' " A scheme ... by wliicli the laborer can unite the functions 
and earn the wages of laborer and employer by superseding the neces- 
sity of using the services of the latter functionary." — Prof. Rogers, Pol. 
Econ., 108. This is a stric+ly accurate, and but for the regretable use 
of the word wages, would be a felicitous, statement of the design oi 
^operation. 



268 THE WAGES QUESTION:^ 

awhile at least, probably a higher price, as their credit 
will not be likely to be so good at first as his. And if 
cooperation should start earliest, and make most progress, 
in those industries where the amount of capital required 
is comparatively small, this would be but a recognition oi 
the fact that cooperation has no tendency to free the labor- 
ing class from any domination of capital, of which com- 
plaint may have been made, but that its sole object is to 
Get E.ID of the Entrepreneur. 

Such being, as I apprehend it, the true nature of coop- 
eration, let us inquire as to the advantages which may be 
anticipated from it, if accomplished ; as to the obstacles to 
be encountered by it ; and as to the probability of its 
success in any such measure as to afford an appreciable 
relief from the peculiar hardships of the wages class. Let 
it be remembered that it is the question of wages, and not 
the question of labor, which cooperation aims to solve. 
The welfare of labor depends on the laws of production, 
under the rule of diminishing returns, taken in connection 
with the laws of population. The question of M-ages is a 
question in the distribution of wealth, and arises out of 
the dependence of a portion of the laboring population 
upon the entrepreneur-class for employment. 

What, then, might we fairly look to cooperation to 
accomplish ? 

Considering the scheme from the laborer's point of view, 
we say : 

First, to reap the profits of the entrepreneur, which 
are very large,^ large enough if divided among the wages 



« " Double interest is, in Great Britain, reckoned what the mer- 
chants call a good, moderate, reasonable profit." Adam Smith 1, 102. 

Sir Arch. Alison gives as an argument against what would practically 
be cooperation, that the profits if divided among the laborers, " would 
not make an addition to them of more than thirty or forty per cent " 
— {Hist. Europe, xxii, 237.) "Profits "here include both the returng 
of capital and the gains of the middleman. Prof. Senior says ; " i1 



ADVANTAGES OF CO-OPERATION. 26f 

class to make a substantial addition to their means of sub- 
sistence. 

Second : to secure employment independently of the 
will of the " middle man." It has been shown in a pre- 
vious chapter, that the interest which the employer has in 
production is found in the balance of profit left after the 
payment of wages. The payment of these, perhaps to 
the extent of ten, twenty, or fifty times his profit, is to him 
merely a necessary means to that end. It nmj be, as has 
been said, that his relations to a body of customers shall 
be such as to induce him to continue producing even 
though, for a time, he sinks his own profit. After the 
efi:ect of this has been exhausted, however, and it is soon 
exhausted, he will pay wages only to get a profit. But 
the condition of the market will often be such as to ren- 
der him exceedingly doubtful of his profit, or even appre- 
hensive of a loss ; and then his whole interest in produc- 
tion ceases. Because he can not see his way to make ten 
or five thousand dollars profit, he is ready to stop a pro- 
duction, the agencies and instrumentalities of which are 
wholly at his command, which involves the payment of 
one or two hundred thousand dollars in wages. Now, 
with reference to such an oft recurring condition of in- 
dustry, a body of workmen may properly say that, 
wdiile they cannot blame the employer for refusing to risk 
the payment of such large amounts in wages to them, 
without a reasonable assurance of getting it back, with a 

may be laid down generally, that in no country have profits continued 

ior any considerable period at the average rate of fifty per cent per 

annum." {Pol. Econ., p. 140.) 

Mr. Purdy estimates the division of the annual product of the land 

of England and Wales as follows : 

Landlord's share (returns of capital) £42,955,963 

Farmer's share (profits) 21,477,981 

Laborer's share (wages) 89,766 156 

£104,200,100 
[Statistical Journal » < Av, 358.] 



270 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

profit, in the price of the goods, yet thej are much dis 
posed to take the responsibility of production upon them- 
selves. Thus, especially in branches of manufacture 
where the value of the materials bears a small proportion 
to the value of the finished goods, they might propose to 
go on producing moderatel}'^ in spite of the most unfavora- 
ble aspect of the market, on the ground that they might 
just as well be laboring as lyiug idle, and sell the product 
for what it would bring. All they should thus receive 
would be clear gain, as against a period of enforced idle- 
ness, and it might not infrequently happen that, on settling 
up their venture, they would find a turn in the market 
giving them a compensation as large or nearly as large as 
usual. 

But it may be asked why should not the employer in 
times of business depression, agree with his workmen to 
pay them whatever he should find in the result he could 
aflbrd. But this would be cooperation, slightly disguised. 
The essence of wages is that they are stipulated before- 
hand : the essence of profits is that they are, as DeQuincey 
calls them, "the leavings of wages," and therefore vary 
as the product varies under the varying conditions of 
industry, natural or artificial. It is of the essence of the 
relation of employer and employed, that the employer 
secures to the employed their wages, and after that, 
appropriates his own remuneration. Were the employed 
to consent to give the employer his profit first, and take 
their wages afterwards, their relations would merely be 
reversed. Five hundred mill hands entering into this 
arrangement would, become a body of coopei'ative produ- 
cers ; the so-called manufacturer would become simply 
their paid manager, their hired man. 

It is true that arrangements for a " sliding scale " of 
wages, adapted to the market price of the product, are 
sometimes entered into in coal and iron mining ; but these 
cover only a portion of the ground embraced in the 



ADVANTAGES OF CO-OPEBATION. 271 

cooperative plan, as the cost of materials and transporta- 
tion, rent, interest, and the general expenses of business 
management, may vary so greatly as very much to reduce, 
and at times to destroy, the employer's expectations of 
profit, in s]ilte of the sliding scale of wages. 

Such, as V7e understand the matter, are the two econom- 
ical advantages for which the wages class look to coopera- 
tion. There is still another advantage, non-economical 
and therefore not in our province, namely, the getting rid 
of the feeling of dependence and the securing of a higher 
social standing. 

In addition to the advantages which the wages class 
have generally in contemplation when plans of coopera- 
tion are proposed, the political economist sees three advan- 
tages of high importance which would result from this 
system if fairly established. 

First : cooperation would, by the very terms of it, 
obviate strikes. The employer being abolished, the work- 
men being now self-employed, these destructive contests 
would cease. The industrial " non-ego " disappearing, the 
industrial egotism which precipitates strikes would dis- 
appear also. Second : the workman would be stimulated 
to greater industry and greater carefulness. He would 
work more and waste less, for, under the cooperative 
system, he would receive a direct, instant, and certain 
advantage from his own increased carefulness and labori- 
ousness. It is true that the pressure thus brought to bear 
upon the individual laborer is not so great as in the case 
of the individual proprietor of land, since there the gain ia 
all his own, while here the workman has to divide with 
his fellow-cooperators the advantages of his own extra 
exertions, looking, though not with absolute assurance, to 
receive an equivalent from each of them in turn. Third : 
the workman would be incited to frugality. He has at 
once furnished him the best possible opportunity for in- 
vesting his savings, namely, in materials and implements 



272 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

which he is himself to use in labor. Especially in the 
early days of cooperative industry, when the great need of 
cooperators is capital, will this pressure be felt, constrain- 
ing the workman to invest in his trade all of his earnings 
that can be spared from necessary subsistence. Capital 
thus saved and thus invested is likely to be cared for and 
used to the best ability of the cooperators. They wiL 
make the most of it, for it will have cost them dear. 

The additional considerations that cooperation tends to 
improve the moral, social, and political character of the 
workman, by giving him a larger stake in society, making 
his remuneration depend more directly on his own con- 
duct, and allowing him to participate in the deliberationa 
and decisions of industry : these considerations, being 
non-economical, belong to the statesman and the moralist. 



Here are several distinct advantages, not fanciful but 
real and unquestionable, which together make up an argu- 
ment for cooperation which is simply unanswerable and 
overwhelming, unless there is validity in our theory of 
the character and functions of the employing class. 

In spite of these marked advantages, however, we have 
to note that cooperation in mechanical industry has 
acliieved a very slight and even doubtful success. Mr. 
Frederick Harrison has called attention in the Fortnightly 
Review * to the fact that the vast majority of all the 
cooperative establishments maintained in England are 
simpl}'- stores, i. e. shops, "for the sale of food and some- 
tiiiies clothing." " These, of course, cannot affect the con- 
dition of industry materially. Labor here does not in any 
sense share in the produce with capital. The relation of 
employer and employed remains just the same, and not a 
Binffle workman would chano-e the conditions of his em- 

• Fortnightly Review, III., 483. 



(SMALL SUCCESS OF COOPERATION. 273 

plojment if the store were to extinguish all the shops of 
a town." 

The industrial cooperative societies, Mr. Harrison con- 
tinues, are raainlj flour mills and cotton mills. The flour 
mills chiefly supply members, though they often employ 
persons unconnected with the society, at ordinary market 
wages, and on the usual terms. They are joint-stock 
companies, for a specific purpose, like gas or railway com 
panics. The only true instances of manufacturing coop- 
erative societies of any importance are the cotton mills. 
" Some of the mills never got to work at all ; some took 
the simple form of joint-stock companies in few hands ; 
others passed into the hands of small capitalists, or the 
shares were concentrated among the promoters. In fact, 
there is now, I believe, no cooperative cotton mill, owned 
by working men, in actual operation, on any scale, with 
the notable exception of Kochdale. . . . Here and 
there, an association of bootmakers, hatters, painters, or 
gilders, is carried on, upon a small scale, with varying 
success. . . . But small bodies of handicraftsmen (or 
rather artists), working in common, with moderate capital, 
plant and premises, obviously establish nothing." 

This is 'certainly a discouraging account to come from a 
labor-champion, at the end of thirty years of efibrt, and 
after the inauguration of so many hopeful enterprises 
which have enjoyed an amount of gratuitous advertise- 
ment, from philanthropic journals and sanguine econo- 
mists, which would have sufiiced to sell a hundred millions 
of railroad bonds, or make the fortunes of a hundred 
manufacturing establishments. 

A later writer gives a not more encouraging picture : 
" A large proportion of all cooperative societies are dealers 
in food, provisions, and articles of clothing, consumed 
chiefly by themselves and families. Others, but in a small 
ratio, are manufacturers of flax, spinners of cotton or wool, 
and manufacturers of shoes, etc. But very few of them 



874 TEE WAGES QUE8TI0JV. 

succeed ; and the failures are to be found chiefly in these 
attempts at production." * 

The same tale comes from France, where these enter- 
prises were inaugurated during the revolutionary period 
of 1848. M. Ducarre's report of 1875, from the Commis- 
sion on Wages and the Relations between Workmen and 
their Employers, claims even less success for cooperative 
production in that country than is reported in England 
and Germany.^ 

In Switzerland, the nursery of accomplished artisans, 
whose citizens are trained in self-government more per- 
fectly than those of any other country in the world, we 
find, at the latest date for which the facts are given,^ only 
thirteen small cooperative societies of production. In 
these inconsiderable results, if not failure, of cooperative 
manufacturing, we find the most striking testimony that 
could be given to the importance of the entrepreneur- 
function in modern industry. Small groups of highly 
skilled artisans — artists, Mr. Harrison would call them — 
carefully selected, using inexpensive materials and small 
"plant," and working for a market^ close at hand, per- 
haps for customers personally known, may achieve success 
by the exercise of no impossible patience and pains. But 
where laborers of very various qualifications, of all ages 
and both sexes, are to be brought together in industries 

' Social Science Transactions, 1871, p. 585. 

' " Les societes cooperatives n'ont pas eu jusqu'a ce jour en France 
le Bucces qu'elles ont obtenu, soit en Angleterre, soit en Alleinague, 
. . . En France, les societes de production n'existent qu'a I'etat de 
minimes exceptions " — pp. 264-5. 

* Report of Mr. Gould, on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 
1872, p. 355. 

* " Pour la petite Industrie, les placements sont en quelque sorte 
assures ; le marche est la sous les yeux du producteur, il en peut a 
chaque instant consulter les besoins, il reconnait a des signes certaina 
I'engorgement et la plethore, aussi bien que I'insufEsance et la disette." 
— Blanqui (aine), U^v.i's d'Economie Industrielle, II,, 63. 



D1FFIGULTIE8 OF COOPERATION. 275 

which involve a great many processes requiring differing 
degrees of strength and skill, and which produce goods 
for distant, and perhaps, at the tinr-e of production, 
unknown markets, we see as yet scarcely a sign of the 
services of the employer being dispensed with. What, 
then, is the reason for this comparative failure of indus- 
trial cooperation ? I answer, the difficulty of effecting 
cooperation on a large scale is directly as its desirableness. 
It is solely because of the importance of the entrepreneur- 
function that the employing class are enabled to realize 
those large profits which so naturally and properly excite 
the desires of the wages class ; and it is for precisely the 
same reason that it is found so difficult to get rid of the 
employing class. 

The qualities of the successful entrepreneur are rare. 
We need only to look around us, within the most limited 
field, and for the shortest time, to see how vast a differ- 
ence is made by the able, as contrasted with the merely 
common-place, not to say bad, conduct of business ; and 
how great losses may be incurred by the failure to realize 
all the conditions of purchase, production, and sale. And 
the more extensively markets are opened by the removal 
of commercial restrictions, the more intense competition 
becomes under the opportunities of frequent communica- 
tion and rapid transportation, the richer the prizes, the 
heavier the penalties, of the entrepreneur; the wider the 
breach between the able and the commonplace manage- 
ment of business. In these days, a person who should, 
upon the strength of respectable general abilities, under- 
take a branch of manufacture to which he had not been 
trained, and in which he had not long been exercised in 
subordinate positions, would run a serious risk of sinking 
a large part of his capital in a few years, it might be in a 
few months ; and this, without any great catastrophe in 
trade, or any flagi-ant instance of misconduct in ''he opera 

14* 



276 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

tions undertaken. Simply n 3t to do well is generally, in 
production, to do very ill. 

It is, of course, hard for workmen to see such large 
amounts taken out of the product to remunerate the 
entrepreneur, leaving so much the less to be divided 
among themselves; and the ambition which leads them to 
attera})t to earn these profits by undertaking this part in 
industry, is wholly honorable and commendable. But it 
is clear that it is a great deal better, even tor the work- 
men, that this heavy tax should be paid to the entrepre- 
neur, than that production should be carried on without 
the highest skill, efficiency, and energy. The proof is 
that, as a rule almost without exception, those employers 
who make the highest profits ai-e the employers who, 
when regularity of employment is taken into account, as 
it ought to be, pay the highest wages. Business must be 
well conducted, no matter how much is paid for it : that 
is the first condition of modern industrial life. The ques- 
tion who shall conduct it, must, even in the interest of the 
working classes, be secondary and subordinate. 

Is it asked, why may not the men who have the knowl- 
edge, skill, and experience requisite for the conduct of 
business, be employed as agents of cooperators, receiving 
wages for their services ? In the first place, I answer, 
the same men cannot conduct the same business as well 
for others as for themselves. You might as well expect 
the bow to send the arrow as far when unbent as when 
bent. The knowledge that he will gain what is gained ; 
that he will lose what is lost, is essential to the temper of 
the man of business. No matter how faithfully disposed, 
he simply cannot meet the exigencies and make the 
choices of purchase, production, and sale, if the gain or 
the loss is to be another's, with the same spirit as if the 
gain or the loss were to be all his own. That alertness 
and activity of mind, that perfect mingling of caution and 
audacity, those unaccountable suggestions of possibilities^ 



niFFlGULTlES OF COOPERATION. 3T1 

opportunities, and contingencies, which, at least, make 
the difference between great and merely moderate success, 
are not to be had at a salary.^ 

Yet I do not claim that the effect of this would extend 
60 lar as to neutralize all the great advantages ^ of coopera- 
tion. If a body of workmen possessed the faith and 
patience necessary to carry them through tlie period of 
outlay and experiment, if they had the good judgment to 
select the best manager they could find, the good sense 
to pay him enough to keep him solidly attached to them, 
and the good humor to support him heartily, submit 
promptly to his decisions, and remain harmonious among 
themselves, cooperation might become a triumphant suc- 
cess with them. But let us see how much all this 
demands from poor human nature. 

In the first place, there is the all-important choice of a 
manager. Not to dwell on the danger of a body of work- 
men mistaking presumption for a true self-confidence, a 
brave show of information for thorouo^h knowledge, an 
affected brusqueness for decision of character; or being 
led away by the plausibilitj^ and popular acts of a candi- 
date, we have the almost certainty that such a body would, 
in the result, lose the best man, if not by turns every 
competent man, through indisposition to pay a sufficient 
salary. In his address before the Cooperative Congress 
already quoted, Mr. Thomas Brassey asked : " Where shall 
we find cooperative shareholders ready to give £5,000 a 
year for a competent manager? And yet the sum I have 

' "It is impossible to lure commercial genius, or the instincts of a 
skilful trader." — Fred'k Harrison, Fortnightly Review, III, 492. 

^ " I am confident that the manual operations will be skilfully and 
probably more diligently performed in a cooperative establishment. 
The personal interests of the workmen will be so directly advanced 
by their application and perseverance that they will naturally work 
hard. But their best elForts will fail to ensure a satisfactory result, 
unless the general organization is perfect a'lso." — Mr. Brassey, at Hali 
fax. The Times' Report. 



278 THE WAGES qUESTlON. 

named is sometimes readily paid bj private employers to 
an able lientenant." * But it is not merely an able lieu- 
tenant, but a " captain of industry," that cooperators must 
secure, if they are to conduct purchase, production, and 
sale in competition with establishments under individual 
control. Can we imagine such a body paying $50,000 a 
year to a manager, when they receive on an average not 
more than $500 themselves ? "Would not jealousy of such 
high wages sooner or later, in one way or another, over- 
come their sense of their own interest ? Even if we sup- 
pose them intellectually convinced of the expediency, 
upon general principles, of paying largely for good service, 
will they not be found calculating that for this particular 
manager this particular sum is altogether too much, or, 
without any disparagement of his merits, experimenting 
to see how much they can " cut him down " without driv- 
ing him off, an experiment always dangerous, always 
breeding ill-feeling, and preparing the w^ay for a separa- 
tion. For why should the man who has the skill and 
knowledge necessary to conduct business on his own 
account be content to remain on a salary greatly below 
the amount he might fairly expect to earn for himself ? 
Is it said his salary is regular and his profits always more 
or less uncertain ? But the men of the temper to conduct 
business are not generally timid men or self -distrustful ; 
they like responsibility and the exercise of authority' — it 
is a part of their pay. Nor are they averse to a risk well 
taken ; it braces them up and makes the game exciting. 
Is it said that want of capital may constrain some of the 
best men to seek employment at the hand of such associa- 
tions ? This is true, in a degree, and here is one of the 
possibilities of cooperation. Yet if a man have the real 
stuff in him, want of capital is not likely long to keep him 
under. The history of modern industiy teaches that. 

' The Times Report. 



DIFFICULTIES OF COOPERATION. 27J. 

Getting into business in the most humble way, the mer- 
chants from whom he buys his materials, those to whom 
he sells his products, and the bankers to whom he resorts 
with his modest note,^ all soon take his measure, and when 
they have taken his measure they give him room. Genius 
will have its appointed course : antagonism and adversity 
only incite, inspire, instruct. 

We have thus far spoken only of those difficulties of 
cooperation which attend the selection and retention of 
able managers. On the difficulties to which this is but an 
introduction, arising out of the tendency to intrigue which 
exists in all numerous bodies, and the disposition to 
meddlesomeness on the part of committees or boards of 
directors,'^ I need not dwell. A sufficient lively impres- 
sion of them is likely to be created by the merest mention. 
I will only further refer to an embarrassment which 
attends the extension of the cooperative plan to all 
branches of manufacture which employ laborers of very 
different degrees of industrial efficiency. Thus, in a cot- 
ton or woolen mill are to be found persons of both sexes 
and of all ages, earning under the present system from a 
few pence up to as many shillings a day. Under the 
cooperative plan, how is the scale of prices to be fixed ? 
To say that all should be paid alike would be monstrous, 
impossible. It would be grossly unjust, and would be 
quite sufficient to wreck the enterprise from the start.^ 

* My honored father has told me of the discussion once held over a 
note for $250, offered at the bank of which he was a director, signed 
with the then unknown name of James M. Bee be. 

' Mr. Thornton (On Labor, p. 441) argues that while societies of 
workingmen may be unable to administer their affairs directly, they 
may be competent, like political societies, " to provide for their own 
government." To the contrary, Mr. Harrison urges (Fortnightly 
Review, III., 493) that " he who is unfit to manage, is unfit to direct 
the manager." 

* Mr. Babbage has shown (Econ. of Manufactures, p. 173-183) that 
the earnings of persons employed in the production of pins, in his day 



880 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But if the laborers are to be paid at different rates, who, 
I ask again, is to determine the proportions in which the 
product shall be divided? How is general consent to be 
obtained to a scheme which must condemn the great 
majority to receive but a contemptible fraction of their 
proportional share ? Without general consent, what 
chance of harmonious action ? But if we suppose the 
scale of distribution to be lixed, who is to assign the per- 
sonnel of the association to their several categories, to say 
that this man shall go into one class, and that man, who 
thinks quite as well of himself, shall go into a lower class? 
Is there not here the occasion, almost the provocation, of 
disputes and bad blood highly dangerous to such an enter- 
prise ? 

I have no desire to multiply objections to this system 
or to magnify the scope of those that offer themselves to 
view. Heartily do 1 wish that workingmen might be found 
rising more and more to the demands which cooperation 
makes upon them ; but I entertain no great expectations 
of success in this direction. The reduction of profits 
through increasing intelligence, sobriety and frugality on 
the part of the wages class, securing them a prompt, easy 
and sure resort to the best market, is the most hopeful 
path of progress for the immediate future. There are of 
course some departments of industry where the services 
of the entrepreneur can be more easily dispensed with, 
than in others. Here cooperation under good auspices 
may achieve no doubtful success. 

It would appear that if cooperation could be intro- 
duced anywhere, it would be in agriculture : yet in no 

ranged from 43:^d. to 6s. If the workmen who were capable of doing 
the higher parts of the work (pointing, whitening, etc.) were to be put 
to making the whole pin, through all the ten processes described, the 
cost of the pins would be three and three-quarter times as great aa 
under the application of the division of labor, with payments to each 
workman according to his capacity. 



COOPERATION. 88 

department of production have the experiments tried 
proved less satisfactory.^ One reason which, in addition 
to those ah-eady enumerated, will probably always serve to 
delay the extension of the cooperative system in this 
direction, is the great difficulty of determining the actual 
profits of a year or a term of years, with reference, as is 
essential, to the value of unexhausted improvements. So 
long as the eooperators hold togetlier and divide the yearly 
produce, all goes well ; but if at any time one desires to 
withdraw, and men will not enter into associations of this 
filiaracter without the right of retiring, at pleasure, with- 
out forfeiture, the question of undivided profits becomes 
of the most serious importance. To settle it with absolute 
justice is simply impossible,^ and no method of arriving 
roughly at a result of substantial justice, is likely to avoid 
deep dissatisfaction and sense of wrong. 

1 An apparently successfal experiment in this direction obtains 
notice in Prof. Fawcett's Pol. Econ., pp. 292-3, note, 

^ Perhaps the difficulty of the problem will be best outlined, to 
those who are not familiar with this special subject of undivided 
profits, or " unexhausted improvements," in agriculture, by present- 
ing the following classification of tenants' expenditures on the soil, 
which was embraced in the Duke of Richmond's Bill of 1875. That 
bill divided improvements into three categories ; permanent, wasting 
and temporary. In the first class were inclnded reclaiming, warping, 
draining, making or improving watercourses, ponds, etc., roads, 
fences, buildings, and the planting of orchards and gardens. With 
respect to these, it was proposed that an outgoing tenant should be 
allowed compensation for the unexhausted value of such of them as 
be might have made within 20 years of the termination of his tenancy 
with the written consent of his landlord. The second class included 
liming, claying, chalking, marling, boring, clay-burning, and planting 
hops, and it was proposed that the tenant should be able to claim for 
these processes, if done within seven years of the end of his tenancy 
no consent being necessary. So also with respect to the third class — 
consuming by cattle, sheep, or pigs, of corn, cake, or other feeding 
stuffs, or using artificial manures — where, however, a claim could no* 
go back beyond two years. 



283 THE WAGES QUESTION. 



The diflSculties of industrial cooperation have been so 
manifest that schemes have been suggested for avoiding 
them in great part, by methods which should sacrifice a 
proportionally smaller part of the advantages looked for 
from cooperation. Among these schemes, one, which seems 
to have been first definitely brought forward by Mr. Bab- 
bage,' has been tried upon a considerable scale. By this 
plan, which may be called one of partial cooperation, the 
employer is induced to admit his workmen to a participa- 
tion to a certain extent in the profits of manufacture, while 
himself retaining the full authority and responsibility of the 
entrepreneur. By this plan the employer might fairly hope 
to attach his workmen to himself by more than the slight 
tie of daily or monthly employment, and to interest them 
so directly in the production of the establishment, as to 
secure a greater activity in labor and more carefulness in 
avoiding waste. The resulting advantages to the workmen 
would clearly be both moral and economical. There is 
quite a body of literature relating to the experiments 
in this direction, of MM. Leclaire,^ Dupont, Gisquet, and 
Lemaire, in France ; of the Messrs. Briggs, owners of exten- 
sive collieries and others in England;^ of a few manufactu- 
rers in a small way in Switzerland,* of M. Cini, an exten- 
eive paper manufacturer of Tuscany,^ and the Messrs. 

* In Mr. Babbage's admirable little work on "the Economy of Man- 
ufactures," published in 1833, a plan of industrial organization is pro- 
posed on the idea that " a considerable part of the wages received by 
each person employed should depend on the profits made by the 
establishment." (pp. 249-50.) 

* J. S. Mill, Pol. Econ., ii. 335-7. 

» Thornton "On Labor," pp. 369-84— McDonnell's Survey of Pol 
Econ. 220-1. 

* Report of Mr. Gould on the condition of the industrial classes 
1872, p. 355. 

' Report of Mr. Herri es on the condition of the industrial classes o* 
Italy. 1871p.234r^. 



cooperation: asi 

Brewster,* carriage manufacturers, of Broome st., New 
York. That something of the sort is practicable, with 
the exercise of no more of patience, pains and mutual 
good faith than it is reasonable to expect of many em- 
ployers and many bodies of workmen, I am greatly dis- 
posed to believe. Many experiments, and probably much 
disappointment and some failures, will be required to 
develop the possibilities of this scheme, and determine its 
best working shape, yet in the end I see no reason to 
doubt that such a relation will be introduced extensively 
with the most beneficial results. 



The objections which have been shown to exist to pro- 
ductwe cooperation do not apply with anything like equal 
force to distributive cooperation, so-called (but which 
could more properly be termed consumptive cooperation), 
that is, the supplying of the wages class with the necessa- 



* The proposal of tlie Messrs. Brewster was most honorable at once 
to the good feeling and to the sagacity of the members of the firm, 
especially Mr. J. W. Britton, with whom the enterprise originated. 
The firm offered to divide ten per cent of their net profits among their 
employees, in proportion to the wages severally earned by them, no 
charge to be made by the members of the firm for their services prior 
to this deduction of ten per cent, or for interest on the capital in- 
vested ; the business of each year to stand by itself, and be independ- 
ent of that of any other year. This handsome proposal was accepted 
by the employees, and an association formed. The plan worked to 
the satisfaction of all parties, as high as $11,000 a year being divided 
among the hands : but at the great strike of the trades in New York 
three years ago, the workmen of this establishment were carried away 
by the general excitement, and the strong pressure brought to bear 
upon them from the outside ; and the scheme was abandoned. So 
long as it worked, it worked well ; and showed that the plan had 
no financial or industrial weaknesses. The failure was at the point 
of patience, forbearance and faith, a very important point ; but may 
uot masters and men be educated up to this requirement, in view ol 
the great advantages to result ? 



284 THE WAGES QUEST JON. 

ries of life through agencies established and supported bj 
themselves. 

By productive cooperation, workmen seek to increase 
their incomes. 

By distributive or consumptive cooperation, they seek 
to expend their incomes to better advantage. They no 
longer seek to divide among themselves the profits of 
manufacture, but the profits of retail ^ and perhaps even 
of wholesale ^ trade. 

Tiie advantages of this species of cooperation are : 

First : the division among the cooperators of the ordi- 
nary net profits of the retail trade. 

Second : the saving of all expenses in the line of adver- 
tising, whether in the way of printing and bill posting, or 
of the decoration of stores with gilding and frescoing, 
with costly counters, shelves, and show cases, with plate 
glass windows and elaborate lighting apparatus, or ot high 
rents paid on account of superior location. The aggre- 
gate saving on these accounts is very large. The " union " 
store may be on a back street, with the simplest arrange- 
ments, yet the associates will be certain to go to it for 
their supplies, without invitation through newspapers or 
posters. 

Third : a great reduction in the expenses of handling 
and dealing out goods. The retail trader must be pre- 
pared at all times to serve the public, and he does not 
dare to greatly delay one while serving another, lest he 
should drive custom to a rival shop. He is therefore 

* For remarks of Messrs. Mill and Cairnes respecting tlxe " excessive 
friction," and consequent undue profits and expenses of retail trade, 
the reader is referred to page 313-5. 

' Very recently the cooperative societies of England have decided 
on a new and far reaching step, and have undertaken the importation 
of foreign supplies required for their numerous stores and shops. 
This step evidently involves a very large addition of responsibility 
and risk, without, as I should apprehend, a proportional gain in the 
evt^nt of success. 



cooperation: 285 

obliged to be at an expense for clerks and porters far 
exceeding what would be required were the trade of the 
day somewhat more concentrated. Some curious results 
of observations concerning the average number of cus 
tomers in shops in London, are given in Mr. Head's papei 
before the Social Science Association/ which may be 
summarized as follows : 

1st observation : time, 4 to 6 o'clock p. m. ; in 88 shops 
there were 76 persons = .86 persons to a shop. 

2d observation : time, 11 a. m. to 1 p. m. ; 54 persons in 
the same 88 shops = .61 persons to a shop. 

3d observation: time, 2 to 4 p.m. ; 114 persons = 1.3 
persons to a shop. 

Average of the three observations : .92 persons to a 
shop. 

Now cooperators can effect a great saving in this re- 
spect. Being sure of their custom, they can control it, 
and concentrate it into a few hours of the day, or perhaps 
of the evening wholly. 

Fourth : a saving, of vast moment, in the abolition of 
the credit system, involving as that does the keeping of 
books, the rendering of accounts, and much solicitation of 
payment, and, secondly, a very considerable percentage 
of loss by bad debts. 

Fifth : security, so far as possible with human agencies, 
against the frauds in weight and measure and in the 
adulteration of goods, which are perpetrated extensively 
under the system of retail trade, the poorest customers 
being generally those who suffer most. 

The diflBculties of consumptive are fewer and less severe 
than those of productive cooperation. To handle and sell 
goods is a much less serious business than to produce 
them. When once marketed, the contingencies of pro- 
duction are past, the quality of the goods is already deter- 

» Transaction^, 1873, pp. 449-5Q, 



286 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

mined, and in the great majority of cases, only moderate 
care is required to prevent deterioration. Then again, 
the profits of retail trade are relatively higher, for the 
capital and skill required, than the profits of manufacture ; 
and hence there is more to be gained by total or even 
a partial success. Finally and chiefly, the destination of 
the goods is already practically provided for ; the members 
are certain to take oif what is bought, if only ordinary dis- 
cretion is used ; waste and loss are therefore reduced to 
the minimum. 

There are, therefore, powerful reasons, in the nature of 
the case, for the success of consumptive cooperation. The 
facts bear out the prognostication, although even this form 
of association has had many disappointments and often 
come to grief, not always from causes easily to be deter- 
mined. " Cooperation," says Mr. Ilolyoake, the historian 
of the movement in England, " is the most unaccountable 
thing that is found amongst the working classes. Nobody 
can tell under what conditions it will arise. Why it 
flourishes when it does, and why it does not flourish when 
it should, are alike inexplicable. Why should it succeed 
in Hochdale, Blaydon, and Sowerby Bridge, and never 
take root in Birmingham, Sheffield, or Glasgow ? There 
is no place in Great Britain so unlikely as Sowerby Bridge 
to produce cooperators. There are no places so likely as 
London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield. Yet 
cooperators in some of these places make no more progress 
than a society of Naggletons. In Sheffield the socialists 
have tried cooperation ; the Methodists have tried it ; the 
Catholics have tried it ; but neither Owen, Wesley, nor 
the Pope have any success in that robust town, where 
mechanics have more advantages, independence, and 
means, and as much intelligence as in any town in Eng- 
land." * We may fairly presume that the case is not alto- 



' Soc. Sciance Transactions, 1864, ^. 6-8, 



COOPERATION. 28T 

getlier so mysterious as Mr. Holyoake would make it out 
to be. Lack of interest in the result, and consequent lack 
of the patience, pains, and self-denial necessary to achieve 
success, and unfortunate choice of managers, through in- 
difference or intrigue, would probably explain most of 
the failures of cooperative trading, where the principle of 
cash payments has been strictly adhered to, and where 
the enterprises have been confined to the supply of the 
cooperators with the simple necessaries and comforts of 
life, without venturing into lines where fashion and taste 
predominate. The latest statistics attainable show 746 
cooperative societies existing in England and Wales. The 
total share capital reaches £2,784,000. The money taken 
for goods sold during the year was £11,379,000. The 
largest of all these societies is the " Civil Service Supply 
Association," which musters 4,500 associates, and which 
in the six months ending February 28, 1874, took in, from 
sales, £819,428. 

It is to be noted that these "stores" do not try to 
undersell the retail shops, but sell their goods at ordinary 
prices, and divide all profits, after a reasonable addition to 
the "reserve," annually or semi-annually, among their 
stockholders. The sums thus coming once or twice a year 
to a workman are likely to be so considerable as strongly 
to suggest the savings bank. 

In France, M. Ducarre's report, while announcing the 
comparative failure of cooperative societies of production, 
states that those devoted to the supply of articles for con- 
sumption, have at once had a much wider trial and 
achieved a much larger degree of success.^ In Germany, 
Belgium, and Italy, the movement for consumptive coop- 
eration is in full present vigor.^ Even in little Denmark, 
where but one industrial cooperative society exists, 37 



» P. 265. 

9 McPonnell's Survey of Pol. Econ., pp. 234-5. 



888 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

cooperative establishments are reported * for the sale of 
articles of domestic consumption. In Austria, account is 
given ^ of 237 cooperative store-unions. In the United 
States, consumptive cooperation has been widely estab- 
lished in connection with the "Granger" movement, and 
also, more on its own merits, through the organization 
known as the " Sovereigns of Industry." ^ 

» Report of Mr. Strachy, 1870, p. 512. 

' Report of Mr. Lytton, 1870, p. 564. 

* I am disappointed to find so little precise statistical information 
in Mr. Chamberlain's work on the Sovereigns of Industry. Figures 
of arithmetic are more needed than figures of speech, in discussions oi 
cooperation. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

THE TRUE WAGES QUESTION. 

If the three great classes which together make up 
modern industrial society, in its highest development, 
have been justly delineated, it will be seen how inaccu- 
rate is that statement of the wages question which makes 
it identical with the labor question. The true wages 
question is the question of employment. Hence the 
popular phrase, " the contest of labor and capital," be- 
comes at once revealed as a misnomer. The true contro- 
versy is not between the laborer and the capitalist, but be- 
tween the laborer and his employer, to wliom laborer and 
capitalist alike are compelled to resort for the opportunity 
to produce wealth and to derive an income. 

In the highly-complicated organization of modern in- 
dustry, the employer, the entrepreneur^ stands between the 
capitalist and the laborer, makes his terms with each, and 
directs the courses and methods of industry with almost 
unquestioned authority. To laborer and to capitalist 
alike he guarantees a reward at fixed rates, taking for him- 
self whatever liis skill, enterprise, and good fortune shall 
secure. How completely the laborer accepts this situation 
of affairs we see in the fewness of the attempts to estab- 
lish productive co-operation, as shown in the preceding 
chapter. But the laborer does not accept the situation 
more utterly, more passively, than does the capitalist. 
Quite as closely does the man of wealth who lias not been 



290 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

trained to business, respect his own limitations ; quite as 
little is he disposed to venture for himself. 

We have a striking exemplification of this impotence of 
the capitalist, as capitalist, in the experience of the United 
States during the past three years. What have the capi- 
talists done, what can the capitalists do, to help them- 
selves in the event of a withdrawal of the business class ? 
They have done nothing, certainly, in the present crisis : 
they can do nothing important, of themselves. They can 
lower their terms and offer their capital at diminished 
rates, affording enterprise tlius a wider margin for profits ; 
but if enterprise finds this inducement insufiicient, the 
capitalist has nothing to do. The money lies in bank ; 
the shops and stores are tenantless. 

Does the capitalist, discontented with the inadequacy of 
his remuneration when he has for months received but 
two or three per cent per annum upon his money, set up 
business in order to employ his own capital and make a 
better interest for himself ? I trow not. The very fact 
that the veteran professional conductors of business have 
withdrawn from production,or have greatly curtailed their 
operations, is a sufiicient advertisement to him that it is no 
time for outsiders to push into the field. lie knows that, 
in the best of seasons, a single venture into an industry of 
which he has had no personal experience, or even into one 
from which he has retired, but so long ago as to have be- 
come rusty in its methods, unfamiliar with its latest ma- 
chinery, and strange to the 'personnel of the trade, might 
well cost him a year's interest on his fortune ; while an 
attempt to carry on production, merely for the sake of 
employing his capital, in a time when the masters of the 
business shrink from the prospect of disaster, would, most 
likely, cost him the bulk of the capital itself. It is not in 
such a time, if ever, that the outside capitalist ventures 
into the field of industry. Even less than the laborer, 
who may be goaded by the stings of personal want, is he 
likely to step forward to take the place from which the 



EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. 291 

entrejpreneur retires. He, too, waits for better times, and 
meanwhile gets what he can for his money " on call." 

I shall, then, in the four remaining chapters of this 
work confine myself to (1) the comparative advantages, 
either in the essence of the relationship or in the acciden- 
tal constitution of the classes as they are found in ex- 
isting economical society, which the employers and the 
employed may be seen to possess ; and (2) the means by 
which that class which we shall find at a relative disadvan- 
tage may be helped or hindered in competition for the 
product of industry. 

And, in the first place, it should be inquired, has either 
a natural advantage over tlie other ? 

It is to be observed that they are respectively buyers 
and sellers of the same thing,' service or labor ; and each 
finds his OAvn interest only as the bargain is effected. Un- 
less that bargain be made, the employer can not have his 
profits any more than the laborer can have his wages. So 
far their interest is common : that the laborer shall be 
employed. It is only as to the rate of wages and the rate 
of profits that opinions and interests diverge. Hence we 
say, the relation of the two parties is not and can not be 
one of antagonism, for the object and effect of antagonism 
is to destroy or to supplant. 

Since, then, the employer gets his profits only as the 
laborer gets his wages,^ and because the laborer gets his 

* Mr. Frederick Harrison, in a somewhat noted article in tlie Fort- 
nijrhtly Review (vol. iii., p. 50), strenuously maintains tliat "the la- 
borer has not got a thing to sell." Tliis seems to be a question of the 
proper use of two words, thing and sell. There are no facts or eco- 
nomical principles involved in the dispute. If Mr. Harrison were to 
acknowledge the propriety of our use of those two monosyllables, he 
would not object to our statement otherwise. If, again, we were to 
take Mr. Harrison's view of the etymology of these words, we should 
not claim that the laborer had a thing to selh 

^ I am here speaking broadly. In an individual transaction the em- 
ployer may fail of his anticip-ted profits and the laborer yet receive 
his wages all the same ; and In other possible cases an employer may 



293 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

wages, it is difficult to see that the employer is any more 
necessary to the laborer than the laborer is to the employer, 
or that either has any natural advantage over the other. 

N^ot a little, however, has been written to prove that the 
employer has such au advantage. Mr. Thornton, in his 
well-known treatise On Labor, has sought to show that 
the sellers of labor are at a disadvantage. 

" All other commodities," he says,' '' may be stored np 
for a longer or a shorter time without loss either in quan- 
tity or quality. But labor will not keep ; it can not be 
left unused for one moment without partially wasting 
away. Unless it be sold immediately some portion of it 
can never be sold at all. To-day s lahor can not he sold 
after to-day., for to-inorrow it will have ceased to exist. A 
laborer can not, for however short a time, postpone the 
sale of his lal)or without losing the price of the labor 
which he might have exercised during the period of the 
postponement." 

Mr. Thornton certainly did not intend to say that labor 
can not be nnused " for one moment" without wasting 
away, since the very lirst condition of labor is that for 
several hours in each day, perhaps one half of the twenty- 
four, it shall be unused. But taking this expression as a 
mere slip of the pen, we note that Mr. Thornton overlooks 
a common experience in industry when he asserts that the 
omission to labor on any day carries with it a total loss of 
the labor that might have been performed. It surely can 
not be denied that a man may work considerably harder 
one day for having lain-by the day before, provided it was 
not for a debauch, or in honor of Saint Monday, but that 
the time was really taken for rest. Sd that it is entirely 
possible, if, to save contention, we take the case of a man 
engaged in piece-work or hired by the hour, that a man 
may still have left him to sell a part at least of the labor 



consent to pay wa<res, and sacrifice liis own present interest in the pro- 
duct, for the sake of profits to be made in better times. 
' On Labor, p. 93. 



MB. THOBWWJTS VIEW. 393 

wliich, on Mr. Thornton's assumption, he would entirely 
and forever lose by failing to work, whether from delibe- 
rate choice, or by higgling with his employer, or by look- 
ing about for better terms than those offered him. 

iSTor is it only on the day following that he may find 
himself able to render a portion of the service which Mr. 
Thornton assumes to be wholly lost by the failure to per- 
form a day's work every day. It is notorious that a laborer 
may be able, by lying-by a whole week, to perform a dis- 
tinctly greater amount of work every day of the week fol- 
lowing ; not, perhaps, that he can well do two ordinary 
weeks' work in one, but that he can in six days do considera- 
bly more than one ordinary week's work, if he has been pre- 
pared for the effort by a long rest. And this capability of 
storing-up the power of labor is not wholly confined with- 
in the limits of a secular week. It is well known that in 
many trades, having peculiar natural or industrial condi- 
tions, workmen acquire an anaconda-like faculty of alter- 
nately gorging and digesting' through periods amounting 
to entire seasons of the year. I do not say that this is de- 
sirable ; I merely assert it as a fact. In none, it may be as- 
sumed, do the workmen perform as much, in the aggre- 
gate for twelve months, as if they had worked continuously, 
or at least with intervals of rest and recreation expressly 
adapted to maintain the highest degree of physical vigor ; 
yet in none, probably, do they fail to perform more, and 
it may be very much more, than it would have been possi- 
ble for them to perform in equal periods, without the 
preparation of a long term of complete rest. 

But it was not alone to correct Mr. Thornton in this 
particular that I quoted him here. Grranting, for the time, 
the total loss of labor in the instances given, and admitting, 
for argument's sake, that the sellers of labor are in a differ- 
ent position from the sellers of any other commodity, is not 

' The scholars and men of letters who distribute their labors equally 
over the fifty-two weeks of the year are, I apprehend, very few. 



294 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

the buyer of labor in tlie same situation precisely ? If he 
does not buy to-day's labor to-day, he surely can not buy 
it to-morrow ; it will th'jn, on Mi". Thornton's assump- 
tion, have ceased to exist. If the laborer does not realize 
wages on his present capacity for labor, the employer 
certainly can not realize proiits on it. Manual labor is 
the essential condition of all production of wealth. If 
manual labor is withdrawn, land can not yield rent, money 
interest, or business-enterprise profits. Labor, meanwhile, 
and just for the same length of time, loses its wages. If 
the stoppage is for a month, each party loses one twelfth 
of its year. 

But that is an even stranger reason which Mr. Thorn- 
ton has discovered for attributing to the employer, in his 
turn, a disadvantage to a degree counterbalancing that 
which he attributes to the laborer, as above. It is that the 
employer, in case of the continued cessation of industry, 
will become " industrially defunct" (On Labor, p. 275) 
when he has eaten up all his capital, whereas " the laborer, 
who is trying conclusions with him, provided only that his 
health be not permanently impaired by the privations he 
is meanwhile enduring, in preserving his thews and sinews 
preserves also his stock-in-trade and his industrial abili- 
ty." Mr. Thornton elsewhere (p. 177) explains what he 
means by employers becoming industrially defunct : " to 
them entire exhaustion of resources would be absolutely 

fatal For the capitalist in losing his capital loses 

his all, distinctive class-existence included ; he ceases to be 
a capitalist." So, we suppose, if the laborer should starve 
to death for want of employment, he would lose his dis- 
tinctive class-existence, with his other existence, and cease 
to be a laborer. 

Now, in the tirst place, who, pray (accepting Mr. Thorn- 
ton's definitions of laborer and capitalist), is to find sub- 
sistence for the laborer, whom Mr. Thornton takes as ha- 
bitually poor, through the long struggle during which the 
capitalist is to become industrially defunct? Is it not 



MR. THORNTON'S VIEW. 395 

something very like a bull to make the assumption that 
the means of tlie employing capitalist would be exliausted 
before the means of the striking laborer, who accordingly 
remains sound and plump in "thew and sinew," while 
the emaciated master shiks out of his distinctive class- 
existence and, economically speaking, expires of inani- 
tion ? 

But, secondly, the employer (here spoken of by Mr. 
Thornton as the capitalist) does not necessarily lose all 
and become industrially defunct on losing his capital. 
" Goodwill " remains, constituted of business connection 
and business reputation, which has been in countless cases 
better than a fortune to the able and deserving man of 
business. It is scarcely too much to say that an employer 
of character and standing, who should sink his capital in 
such a contest as Mr. Thornton supposes, would not fail to 
command -the means to resume and carry forward his in- 
dustrial operations. Indeed, it is, at least in the United 
States, uncommon for a really reputable house to be 
extinguished even by a failure on commercial grounds. 
Witness the great liquidation of 1873-6. 

We do not, then, find any ground for attributing to 
either employer or laborer a natural advantage over the 
other. Certainly, if there be truth in the adage of Cha- 
teaubriand, " Le salaire n'est que Tesclavage prolonge," it 
is not on account of any thing essential in the nature of 
the relations o ' the employer and the employed. 

We have alreuly, in discussing the causes which dimin- 
ish industrial mobility, alluded to the principal causes 
which place the wage-laborer at a disadvantage in com- 
petition. N^ow that we have formally arrayed the em- 
ploying and the employed classes over against each other, 
two of these causes may instructively be considered more 
in detail. The first is the accidental fact of the superiority 
of numbers on the side of the employed, giving the em- 
ployers an advantage which is not at all of the essence of 
the relationship. In most countries and in most occupa- 



296 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

tioiis' the buyers of labor are few, the sellers of labor arc 
many. Aside from the effects of possible combinations 
among the buyers or the sellers, there is in this an element 
of weakness to the individual seller. For instance, if we 
consider the case of a manufacturer employing usually 
twenty hands, we may say that his need to employ those 
workmen is correspondent precisely to their need of em- 
ployment. If the conditions of his business would allow 
the profitable employment of twenty hands, his loss, if for 
any cause he emplo^'^s but nineteen, may be assumed to be 
as great as the twenty workmen, taken as a body, suffer 
therefrom. But just here is the rub : the twenty are not 
a body having a common interest. The loss is not to be 
divided equally among them. It is to fall entire on a 
single one of the number; and this calamity each one for 
himself seeks to escape. 

In the apprehension, amounting it may be to terror, of 
being left out of the number of the employed, each of the 
twenty is ready to accept terms below the ordinary rate. 
It does not require any analysis of the elements of the 
case to show that, in such a temper of the competitors for 
employment, wages will go below — it may be greatly 
below — the limit at which the euqjloyer might be able 
fairly to reimburse himself for his expenditure and make 
his average profits. Here we have a result of distinct 
economical advantage on the part of the employer, arising 
not from the essential character of the relation, but fi-om 
the accident that the employers are few, the employed 
many. 

The second great fact in regard to the wages class as we 
find them, is their habitual poverty. This poverty is not 

' The most marked exception is found in tlie matter of domestic 
service. The employers are here more nuiuerous, but only in a mode- 
rate degree. The number of families employing one or two servants 
only, vastly exceed the more hi<jh]y-organized households. But, upon 
our definition, domestic servants belong to the salary or stipend class, 
and not to the wages class. 



THE LABORER'S POVERTY. 397 

nt all involved in the position of a wage-laborer, and in 
fact it is not found as a rule in some communities, nor 
without exception in any community. The vast majority, 
however, of all wage-laborers have little or no accumula- 
tions, many being even without the means of subsisting 
themselves a month, or a week, without work. They are, 
therefore, unable to stand out against their employers and 
make terms for their services, or to seek a better market 
for their labor in another town or city, but must accept 
the first offer of employment, however meagre the com- 
pensation. Even though the matter in dispute between 
them and their employers may be sufficient to justify a 
protracted contest, they lack the primary physical means 
of sustaining that contest. The wage-laborer is thus like 
a poor litigant who must lose a valuable claim because he 
has not the money to pay the cost of a suit ; and after a 
struggle, short at the utmost, he sees himself on the verge 
of suffering or even of starvation ; and, if not for his own 
sake, at least for that of his wife and children, is fain to 
accept the terms that are offered him. 

The employer, on the other hand, has only to calculate 
whether the matter in dispute between him and his hands 
is really worth a contest ; and if he find it so, he can, so 
far as his own mere physical maintenance is concerned, 
protract the contest indefinitely. By " indefinitely" I 
mean that the term through which the master can with- 
hold employment is altogether out of proportion to the 
term during which the laborer, as he is found in actual 
life to be furnished with the means of subsistence, can 
manage to live without employment. 

But the employer may not deem the matter in dispute 
worth a contest, and hence it is of great importance to the 
laborer that he should have the ability, at least for a time, 
to dispute the employer's terms, and make him fairly face 
the prospect of a struggle before deciding against his de- 
mands. If, then, the employer sees that the profits which 
the lower wages would euable him, in a given period, to 



398 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

make will be eaten up in a period of inactivity, it may 
fairly be assumed that, if he can, he will concede what is 
asked. This, of course, implies that the question of pe- 
cuniary interest only is considered, and that bad temper 
and creature pugnacity' do not enter as elements in the 
situation. 

In connection with this assumed calculation by the em- 
ployer as to the expediency of standing out against a de- 
mand for wages which he may be able, tliough reluctant, 
to concede, we have to take into account two elements 
which are additional to the simple one of the amount of 
wages to be paid. 

The first is the employer's interest in the continuity of 
production. 

The interest which the employer has in the continuity of 
production, over and above the mere profits which he might 
expect to realize in a given period during which a sus- 
pension of industry might be proposed or threatened, 

' This exception is important. We have a strange dictum from 
Professor Cairnes in his work, Some Leading Principles of Political 
Economy (p. 268), as follows : " The temporary success of a strike 
does not necessarily prove its wisdom ; but the failure of a strike, im- 
mediate or ultimate, is decisive evidence that it ought never to have 
been undertaken." It Avould be possible to place a construction on 
this language which should remove the remark from the criticism 
which the plain sense of the words invites. Surely it is conceivable 
tiiat a body of workmen should make a demand on their employer 
which the state of the market would fairly allow him to concede, and 
which, in another mood, he might cheerfully concede. The demand, 
however, being made or met, it matters not which, in bad temper, ill- 
blood is aroused and a conflict precipitated. In such a contest the 
workmen might be beaten by the longer purse of a wilful, resolute em- 
ployer, and finally obliged to yield, without proving their demands un- 
reasonable, any more than a poor patentee being obliged to abandon 
an invention to a powerful combination of manufacturers, in these days 
of tardy and costly justice, would prove that he never had any rights 
in the case. Of course, if it be held that failure in human affairs of 
itself proves folly. Professor Cairnes's remark is justified. In that case 
it would be correct to say of a ship which should sail by the usual 
route from Liverpool to New- York and be sunk by an iceberg hallway 
across, that she ought never to have undertaken the voyage. 



CONTINTIITT OF PRODUCTION. 399 

arises mainly out of that business connection and that 
business reputation which are summed up in the phrase 
" goodwilL" Altogether besides the loss of immediate 
profits, an employer of labor has to contemplate a certain 
loss of custom as involved in any protracted stoppage of 
his works. 

The world of politics does not sooner forget a former 
leader in retirement than the world of business forgets 
one who withdraws from the competitions of trade. Even 
the strongest houses, howevei- com|)letely they may seem 
to have the control of the market in their line, do not 
like to have their customers and correspondents learn to 
go elsewhere, througli any failure of theirs to meet every 
demand upon them. Hence they not infrequently con- 
tinue producing through considerable periods of depres- 
sion, making a sacrifice of their accustomed profits, and 
sometimes even for shorter periods producing at an actual 
loss, though on a scale as much diminished as is consistent 
with keeping tlieir hold on their connection.^ 

^ Somewhat aside from tliis consideration, yet here mentioned in 
order to avoid multiplying distinctions, is the fact that, in some in- 
dustries, besides the sacrifice of the employer's profits during a stop- 
page, there are considerable expenses (additional to loss of rent and 
interest) to be incurred in maintaining the service in condition for re- 
sumption. Such expenses are those of keeping mines free from water, 
and keeping furnaces in blast. If these things are to be done, it is at 
a great cost ; if omitted to be done, and the mines are allowed to fill 
up and the fires to go out, a heavy tax is imposed upon the resumption 
of production. On the other hand, it deserves to be mentioned that the 
suspension of production may at times be a relief to the employer. 
This may happen when the reduction of profits, through the depression 
of trade, coincides with an occasion for repairing or renewing machinery 
or enlarging works, or converting buildings to different uses. Thus 
we find it stated concerning the great Glasgow strike of 1874 : " Ad- 
vantage is being taken of the present opportunity to execute any im- 
portant repairs and reconstructions that can be undertaken ; so that 
even though the strike were at an end to-morrow, some days would 
elapse before the work of production could possibly be in full swing 
again." — Iron and Coal Trades Review. 



300 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But, secondly, the employer has an interest in the con^ 
tinuity of emjployment. 

This arises {a) out of the knowledge acquired, through 
previous service, of the lal)orer''s disposition and charac- 
ter, especially as to honesty, truthfulness, and sobriety ; 
(i) out of that mutual adaptation, in way and habit, ex- 
tending even to the tone of the voice and the carriage of 
the body, which results between man and master, and be- 
tween every man and his mates, from long acquaintance; 
(c) out of that familiarity which the workman acquires with 
the peculiarities of his employer's business, which is wholly 
additional to a mastery of the technicalities of the occu- 
pation, and which includes an intimate knowledge of the 
localities in which the industry is prosecuted, of the fix- 
tures and machinery in use, of the customers, it may be, 
of the establishment ; and lastly, of the minor yet im- 
portant characteristics which often distinguish the product 
of one establishment from that of any other, and thus give 
it a quality which, though it perhaps adds nothing to its 
utility in the hands of the consumer, yet serves the pur- 
poses of the producer for the advertisement and easy 
recognition of his wares'; and id) out of the loss of time 
or of energy which every change, simply as change, in- 
volves, in greater or less degree. 

The interest which, on the above several accounts, em- 
ployers have in preserving the continuity of employ- 
ment, varies greatly. No employer, it may be assumed, 
but is interested to a degree in knowing how far he may 
look to his individual workmen for the simple virtues of 
honesty, truthfulness, and sobriety ; but in many large de- 
partments of industry the advantages which we have 
indicated as implied in the retention of workmen would 

' Many manufacturers and dealers will recognize this element as of 
no small importance. They identify the products of different establish- 
ments by their style and finish, as easily and certainly as the editor of a 
newspaper comes to identify the smallest clipping from a contemporary 
by its paper, type, and " make-up." 



OONTINTTITT OF EMPLOYMENT. 301 

seem shadowy and iinsiibstantial. New men taken on in 
an emergency do as much work, and perhaps do it as 
well, as the old. The conditions of the business, the na- 
ture of the products, are not such as to make it worth 
while to retain a workman at any great sa,crilice, so long 
as another of the same industrial grade can be had. 

In other branches of industry, however, the advantages 
which have been enumerated are not only substantial but of 
great importance. At times, indeed, they are recognized 
in the grading of wages somewhat according to the length 
of service; and probably few employers of labor in these 
branches would deny that the reason of the case would 
Justify that system being carried much further than it is. 
Yet, while the distinct acknowledgment of the advantages 
of continuity of employment, by money payments propor- 
tioned to length of service, is still highly exceptional, it 
may be said that these advantages are almost as a rule re- 
cognized by employers in a preference given to their older 
employees in the event of a reduction of force ; and since, 
as has been shown heretofore, regularity of employment 
is to be taken into account in reducing nominal to real 
wages, we may fairly say that these advantages are actu- 
ally paid for in no inconsiderable amount. 

Yet, though workmen are thus compensated through 
money payments, or, more frequently, by preference given 
them in reductions of force, for the power they have ac- 
quired, through continuance in employment, of rendering 
a higlier quality of service ; in general, at least, there \b 
strong reason to believe that they are not paid as much on 
this account as the considerations adduced would warrant. 
The force of custom, the jealousy of fellow-employees, 
the stress of trades-union regulations,' and, not least, the 
failure of the employer to recognize the full merit of the' 



' Many trades unions or societies disavow the purpose to prevent 
workmen of exceptional merit from receiving wages above the 
average. 



302 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

workman and tlie degree in wliicli it contributes to his 
own success ; these latter, in connection with the master's 
knowledge tliat, though the workman may take from him 
these advantages, he can not carry them to any one else^ 
are in a great majority of cases sufhcient to keep the re- 
muneration of the higher grades of labor from rising pro- 
portionally to their real worth. Yet we can not doul)t 
that the employer's conscious interest in the continuity of 
employment does enter,' in almost every issue joined be- 
tween him and his workmen, as an element in deduction 
from the computed diiference between the wages paid 
and the M\ages demanded. Few masters in any branch of 
industry could contemplate the sudden change of their en- 
tire laboring force as less than a business calamity, while 
in many branches of production it would involve great 
loss if not ruin. Partial changes may indeed be effected 
without actual sacrifice of capital, but not without a 
marked increase of labor and of anxiety on the part of 
employers. 

' A very striking demonstration of the importance of this considera- 
tion in many branches of industry is to be seen by the most casual ob- 
server in the phenomenon of a part of the laborers in a trade wholly 
unemployed. Why are not all employed at lower prices? This would 
be the effect of simple competition. The answer is found partly in the 
lorce of personal consideration and respect arising out of acquaintance 
and association ; but mainly in the employer's interest in the continuity 
of employment. He could not afford for a short time to take on new 
hands even at lower rates. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

WHAT MAY PLACE THE WAGES CLASS AT A DISADVANTAGE ? 

We have seen (Chapter X.) that the only security which 
the wages class can have that they shall receive the largest 
possible remuneration which is compatible with the exist- 
ing conditions of industry, is found in their own perfect 
mobility. Without this, they are clearly subject to re- 
ductions of wages under pressure, to be succeeded only 
too surely by industrial degradation (Chapter IV.). And 
it is further evident that it matters not, in the result, 
whether the total or partial immobility of labor be pro- 
duced by physical causes, by the force of positive law, or 
by fear, ignorance, or superstition. Any thing which de- 
ceives the sense of the wage-laborer or confuses his appre- 
hension of his own interest may be just as mischievous, 
in a given case, as bodily constraint. 

Following out this line of thought, we find that the 
wage-laborer may be put at disadvantage, 

I. By laws which act in restraint of movement or con- 
tract. Such laws may not be prohibitory, but merely 
regulative in their intention, and yet retard more or less 
seriously the passage from occupation to occupation, or 
from place to place. Even the mere necessity of registra- 
tion imposed must have an effect, however slight, in the 
nature of obstruction ; and unless it can be shown^ that, by 
increasing the intelligence and confidence with which 

^ See p. 169. 



304 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

changes of location or of occupation may be effected, it 
more than compensates for the degree of hindrance and 
irritation wliich the merest act of registration involves, it 
must be condemned as prejudicial to the wages class, 
whose supreme mterest is the easy, ready flow of labor to 
its market. 

But it is not of such incidental or perhaps wholly un- 
de^gned mischief that labor has had chiefly to complain in 
the past Those countries are very young whose history 
does not afford repeated instances of direct and purposed 
obstruction to industrial movement and contract, in the 
interest of the employing class, which has generally been 
largely identical with the law-making class. The vicious 
maxims of English legislation in this respect extended 
even to the American colonies, free as they kept them- 
selves otherwise from the industrial errors of the mother 
country, and laws in regulation of service and of wages 
remained long on the statute-books of these enlightened 
communities. 

A brief recital of the English legislation in restraint of 
the natural rights of labor will not prove uninstructive. 

After the frightful plague, called the Black Death, 
which swept o\'er England in 134:8—1:0, carrying away 
" perhaps from one third to one half of tlie population,'" 
wages rose, from the temporary scarcity of labor, to rates 
previously unknown ; nor can it be doubted that labor- 
ers, thus by a great accident made for the time masters 
of the situation, assumed a tone which employers relished 
quite as little as tliey liked their higher terms. To meet 
tliis exigency," Edward III. issued a proclamation for- 
bidding the payment of more than customary wages, ^ 

* Rogers, Hist, of Agr. and Prices. 

^ " Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen 
and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of 
masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they receive 
esc 'ssive wages," etc., etc. 

^Namely, those wages which had been paid in the SOtli vearof Kinor 



LAWS FIXING WAGES. 305 

and requiring workmen to serve in their accustomed 
place. About a year later, the disputes which arose in 
determining what wages had been customary before the 
plague led to the enactment of a law (25 Edward III.) 
fixing for the whole kingdom the precise amount to be 
paid in wages in each of the principal occupations. Ser- 
vants were to be " sworn two times in the year before 
lords, stewards, bailiffs, and constables of every town to 
hold and do these ordinances." . . . "And those 
which refuse to make such oath, or to perform that that 
they be sworn to or have taken upon them, shall be put in 
the stocks by the said lords, stewards, bailiffs, and con- 
stables of the towns by three days or more, or sent to the 
next gaol, there to remain till they will justify them- 
selves." The statute prescribed the " hveries and wages" 
of " carters, ploughmen, drivers of the plough, shepherds, 
swineherds, deies, and all other servants" in husbandry ; of 
"carpenters, masons and tilers, and other workmen of 
houses," including their " knaves," and of " plaisterers and 
other workers of mudwalls and their knaves."' 

But by the 13th year of Kichard II. Parliament had ac- 



Edward's reign, or tlie average of " five or six other common years next 
before." 

' I select the following examples from the laws of the Massachusetts 
Colony : 

1630, 23d August.—" It was ordered that carpenters, joiners, brick- 
layers, sawyers, and thatchers shall not take above 2s. a day ; nor any 
man shall give more, under pain of 10«. to taker and giver." 

28th September.—" It is ordered that no master carpenter, mason, 
joiner, or bricklayer shall take above 16d a day for their work, if they 
have meat and drink, and the second sort not above 12d a day, under 
pain of 10s. both to giver and receiver." 

Two other acts had been i)assed of a similar nature, when, on the 22d 
March, 1631, the General Court " ordered (that whereas the wages of 
carpenters, joiners, and other artificers and workmen were by order of 
court restrained to particular sums) shall now be left free, and at 
liberty as men shall reasonably agree." In September, however, the 
Court suffered a relapse, and for four years longer continued to fix spe- 
cifically the wages of labor. 



306 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

cumulated experience enougli of the evils of settling a 
common rate for all England to provide that " forasmuch 
as a man can not put the price of corn and other victuals 
in certain,'" justices of the peace should in every county 
make occasional proclamation, " by their discretion, accord- 
ing to the dearth of victuals, how much every mason, car- 
penter, tiler, and other craftsman, workman, and other 
laborers by the day, as well in harvest as in other times of 
the year, after their degree, shall take, with meat and 
drink or without meat and drink." By the important act 
of 5 Elizabeth this power of justices to lix wages was 
re-enacted, and, though long disused, it was not until the 
53 George III. that the authority was formally with- 
drawn. 

But it was not the rate of wages alone which received 
the attention of the early parliaments. The statute of 37 Ed- 
ward III. required that " artificers, handicraft people, hold 
them every one to one mystery, which he will choose be- 
twixt this and the (said) feast of Candlemas ; and two of 
every craft shall be chosen to survey that none use other 
craft than the same which he hath chosen." By statute 
of 12 Richard II. it was ordained that " he or she which 
use to labor at the plough and cart, or other labor or service 
of husbandry, till they be of the age of twelve years ; that 
from thenceforth they shall abide at the same labor, with- 
out being put to any mystery or handicraft." But the 
statute of the largest effect in constraining the courses of 
labor was that of the 5th Elizabeth knowm as the Statute of 



' The Massachusetts General Court reached the same conclusion some 
hundreds of years later, and having repealed, September 3d, 1635, the 
law " that restrained workmen's wages to a certainty," enacted in 1636 
" that the freemen of every town shall from time to time, as occasion 
shall require, agree among themselves about the prices and rates of all 
workmen, laborers, and servants' wages ; and every other person in- 
habiting in any town, whether workman, laborer, or servant, shall be 
bound to the same rates which the said freemen or the greater part 
shall bind themselves unto." 



LEGAL REGULATION OF LABOR. 307 

Apprentices, by which the access of unskilled labor to the 
trades and professions was restricted within the narrowest 
bounds. A single section will suffice. Xo merchant, 
mercer, draper, goldsmith, ironmonger, embroiderer, or 
clothier may take an apprentice, " except such servant or 
apprentice be his son, or else that the father or mother of 
such apprentice or servant shall have, at the time of taking 
of such apprentice or servant, lands, tenements, or other 
hereditaments of the clear yearly value of forty shillings 
of one estate of inheritance or freehold at the least." 

So much for restraints on movement from one occupa- 
tion to another. Movement from place to place was re- 
stricted with equal jealousy. By statute of 25 Edward 
III. it was ordained that, with exception of certain coun- 
ties, no laborer in agriculture should "go out of the 
town where he dwelleth in the winter to ser\'e the sum- 
mer, if he may serve in the same town, taking as before 
is said." By the statute of 12 Richard II. it was provided 
that '' no servant or laborer, be he man or woman, shall 
depart at the end of his term out of the hundred, rape, or 
wapentake where he is dwelling, to serve or dwell else- 
where, or by color to go from thence in pilgrimage, unless 
he bring a letter-patent containing the cause of his going, 
and the time of his return, if he ought to return, under 
the king's seal," etc. Although all life had long passed 
out of these statutes, it was not until 182i that the laws 
prohibiting the emigration of artisans from the kingdom 
were repealed, as vain and uselessly irritating. 

Such extracts as have been presented will perhaps serve 
sufficiently to convey an impression of the minuteness and 
rigidity of the numerous acts which sought to regulate the 
industry of England. It is not necessary to show that such 
laws were always fully enforced,' to establish the certainty 

^ Many of these acts were doubtless passed in the spirit of 2 and 3 
Edward VI. (c. 9) : "Therefore, as the malice of man increaseth to de- 
fraud the intent of ^ood laws, so laws must rise against such guile 
with the more severity, day by day, for the due repress of the same-" 



308 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

that tliej wrought grievous evil to the working classes. 
If they liad effect only in part, if they were only enforced 
here and there and now and then, or even if they were 
always to be evaded, but by resort to concealment, strata- 
gem, or indirection, then they must have seriously aifected 
the mobility of labor. 

But it is doubtful if all the barbarous enactments we 
have cited are together responsible for more of the present 
pauperism and destitution of England than is the law of 
parochial settlement. This act originated in the reign of 
Charles II., and while other restrictions upon the move- 
ment of population wei'e gradually giving way before the 
expansion of industrial enterprise and the liberalizing ten- 
dencies of modern thought, the mischievous provisions of 
the Law of Settlement were given a wider scope and an 
increased severity from reign to reign. It is only within 
the last twelve years that the cords that crossed the politi- 
cal body in all directions, cutting off the circulation until 
every portion of the surface broke out in putrefying sores, 
have been loosened. The image may seem extravagant ; 
but no language can exaggerate the effect of such restraints 
on population. Migration within the kingdom was prac- 
tically prohibited. If the laborer in search of emj^loy- 
ment ventured across the boundaries of his parish (and 
there are 15,535 parishes in England and Wales), he was 
liable to be apprehended and returned to the place of his 
settlement ; while parish officers were perpetually incited 
by the fears of the ratepayers to zeal in hunting down and 
running out all possible claimants of public charity oti 
whom, if unmolested, residence would confer a right to 
support. " "When an employer wished to engage a servant 
from a foreign parish, he was not permitted to do so un- 
less he entered into a recognizance, often to a considerable 
amount, to the effect that the incomer should not obtain the 
settlement, else the bond to be good against the em])loyer. 
Parochial registers are fidl of such acknowledgments.'" 

* Bogers, Pol. Econ., p. 123. 



LEGAL REGULATION OF LABOR. 309 

The peasant and the artisan, thus shut up within the 
place of their birth, were compelled to meet the fate which 
awaited the industry of that locality. All local calamities 
fell with unbroken force upon a population that had no 
escape. The calamity might be temporary, but the effects 
upon character and life were not. Industry might look 
up again, but the peasant, broken in his self-respect, bru- 
talized, pauperized, could never afterwards be the same 
man. Employment might revive ; but no art of mau, 
no power of government could reconstitute the shattered 
manhood. 

It is probably safe to say that no Continental country 
has, at least within late years, maintained any law so iu- 
jurious in its practical effects in producing a helpless im- 
mobility of labor, as the English law of settleuient, the 
original object of which was to keep, not laborers, but 
paupers, in their place. But of laws directly seeking, in 
the interests of employers, to control the movements of 
labor, whether from place to place or from occupation to 
occupatiou, there is in the history of Earopeau legislation 
limit neither to number nor to variety. In France,' in 
spite of some contradictory features, it may be said that 
freedom of labor was achieved by the Revolution. In 
Germany, and among the Scandinavian'^ peoples, the system 
of restriction was strongly intrenched, and still survives 
with no little force, nothwithstanding the tremendous 
breaches made in it by the liberalizing tendencies of the 
last twelve or fifteen years. In Denmark, perhaps, of all 
these countries, free trade in labor is most nearly achieved.' 
In Austria laws instituting the " Geaossenschaften," or 

^ M. Ducarre's Report of 1875, to which I Lave several times referred, 
presents a good view of the course of measures by which labor in 
France has been emancipated (pp. 22-64). 

'^ " The corporation system exists with more vigor in Denmark, Nor- 
way, and Sweden," wrote Mr. Laing in 1851, " than in any other coun- 
try." — Denmark and the Duchies, p. 301. 

^ Since 1862. See Report of Mr. Strachey on the Condition of the 
Industrial Classes, 1870, p. 505. 



310 THE WAGES QUESTIOK 

guilds, are so far modified that these are no longer close 
corporations. They are still, however, compulsoiy associa- 
tions, to which every Austrian workman is under legal 
ohligation to belong.' 

II, The wage-laborer may be put at disadvantage by 
a fictitious currency. The laborer suffers, with other 
classes of the connnunity, from the disturbances of in- 
dustry which are always occasioned by an inflated and 
fluctuating circulation ; but the injury to which I refer 
under the present title is due to the difficulty which the 
laborer experiences in adjusting his demand upon his 
employer to the rapid and violent changes in the currency 
cost of living, and to the illusions created by paper 
wealth, by which the laborer's expenditure is inevitably 
more or less perverted and distorted. 

The most difficult mental operation which ordinary men 
are called upon to perform is that of discount. Even the 
book-educated and men of affairs find it laborious and 
painful. Mr. Laing, the well-known traveller, lias left a 
curious bit of testimony on this point in a remark made 
in his Tour in Sweden, to the effect that he always caught 
himself thinking of a mile in that country as he would of 
a mile in England, although the Swedish mile is seven 
times as long. If such is the experience of a cultivated 
mind in so simple and familiar a matter, what can be ex- 
pected of men of limited views and little information, 
subject unduly to the first impression of things and un- 
trained to arithmetical computations, when called to render 
their wages into terms corresponding to the rapidly chang- 
ing prices of the necessaries of life ? It is a work which 
would task the powers of a philosopher ; it is extremely 
improbable that a workingman will succeed in accomplish- 
ing it. The laborer's interest will not come to him : he 
must go to it; and to do 8o he must be able to identify 
and locate it with precision and assurance. In the absence, 

1 Eeport of Mr. Lytton, 1870, p. 523. 



WAGES AND THE CUBBENCY. 311 

therefore, of clear and definite ideas on tlie relation of 
wages and prices, the laborer must under such a currency 
follow blindly around after prices, guided only by a gen- 
eral sense of the inadequacy of his wages in making his 
demands npon his employer. Acting without intelligence 
in the premises, it is a matter of conrse that he sacrifices 
in some degree his own interests. He either demands too 
mnch, and failing perhaps in a persistent demand injures 
alike himself and his employer; or, asking too little, he 
rests content with getting that. 

It was doubtless with reference to this inability of the 
laboring class to meet such sudden and violent changes of 
conditions as are caused by a fictitious currency that Mr. 
Mill assigned to " custom" in economics the same benefi- 
cent function which it has performed in the sphere of poli- 
tics as "the most powerful protector of the weak against 
the str(.)ng." Habit, usage, constitutes a barrier which in 
a degree preserves the economically weak from the hust- 
lings and jostlings of the marketplace, and gives them 
room to stand.^ A fictitious currency breaks down this 
barrier and involves all classes of the community in a fu- 
rious and incessant struggle for existence in which the 
weakest are certain to be trampled down. 

But it is not alone in competition with the employer 
that the laborer is placed at disadvantage by a fictitious 
currency. If it is difhcidt for the laborer to secure the 

* I am liere speaking of wagu laborers as lliey are and not as they 
mig-lit be. There could be a better state of things still than that in 
which "custom" protects the poor — that is, a condition in which the 
laboring class should be so intelligent, and hence so strong, that they 
could not afford and would not endure to take a defensive position, 
but should welcome the utmost that competition could do. But so 
long as the working classes remain, 'as in most countries, ignorant and 
inert, it is possible that causes reducing the severity of competition 
mny be properly correspondent to their weaknesses, and thus beneficial. 
However that may be, it stands by itself, that the working classes, be- 
ing inadequately prepared to follow around after changes of price, must 
be injured by whatever makes those changes more frequent and 
violent. 



312 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

adjustment of liis wages to the varying cost of living, 
much more difficult is it for him to hold his own in the 
contest with the retail dealer from whom he obtains the 
necessaries of life. A laborer's earnings ai'e expended in 
hnndreds of small purchases. If his earnings come to him 
in depreciated paper, and are to be expended in commo- 
dities at inflated prices, he is, if he would judge either of 
the proportion between his present and past expenditures 
as a whole, or between the price of any one article and 
that which he has had to pay for it, obliged to perform 
operations of discount which woidd be laborious to an 
arithmetician. All hold being lost on " custom," how can 
he tell what he ought to pay per pound, per bushel, or per 
yard for articles of ordinary consumption ? lie knows 
nothing about the conditions of their production, and has 
no longer a traditional price to guide him. Formerly, if 
an article of domestic consnm])tion advanced considerably, 
he was in the mood and in the position to resist the ad- 
vance until it proved itself a genuine one. He disputed 
the higher price ; he alleged the customary price ; he held 
off purchasing as long as he could, because he disliked 
to pay the advance; he inquired elsewhere to ascertain 
whether other dealers were asking the same. With a 
community in this temper, retail prices will not be wan- 
tonly advanced ; nothing less than a substantial reason in 
the state of the market will succeed in establishing a new 
price, and since every step will be taken against resistance, 
that new price will be kept down to something like the 
necessity of the case. 

But under a fluctuating currency this hold of the retail 
buyer upon customary price is lost. It is with prescrip- 
tion as with a bank-bill : when once it is broken, the pieces 
are soon gone.' The laborer loses his reckoning. When 
prices go up far beyond what is usual, he can not presume 
to judge whereabouts they should stop. After rinding 

' The Nortliern Monthly, May, 1808 ; article, " The Greenback Era." 



THE CURRENCY AND RETAIL PRICES. 313 

advance upon advance established, in spite of his question- 
ing and complaints, he becomes discouraged. He learns 
to pay without dispute whatever the shopkeeper demands, 
for he has no means of dotermhiing the justice of that 
demand. It is this temper which enables the retail dealer 
to gather his largest profits and work his worst extor- 
tions. 

This it was, over and above the proper effects of curren- 
cy inflation, which allowed retail prices to be carried up to 
such an unpreseJented height in the United States during 
the war of secession, and to be kept up by combinations 
of dealers long after whatever reason had existed for the 
advance ceased. The extravagant profits thus realized had 
not, as is well known, the effect to invite true competition 
tending to reduce prices, but merely served to allow the 
multiplication of shops and stands at everj^ corner and to 
support an army of middlemen.' 

This point is of so much importance in the philosophy 
of wages, that I take the further space to present some 
notable extracts from the writings of Mr. Mill and Prof. 
Cairnes relative to the function of " custom" in retail 
trade. 

" Hitherto," says Mr. Mill, " it is only in the great cen- 
tres of business that retail transactions have been chiefly, 
or even much, determined by competition. Elsewhere it 
rather acts, when it act.^ at all, as an occasional disturbing 
influence. The habitual regulator is custom, modified, 
from time to time, by notions existing in the minds of 
purchasers and sellers, of some kind of equity or justice 
. . . Retail price, the price paid by the actual con- 
sumer, seems to feel slowly and imperfectly the effect of 
competition, and where competition does exist, it often, 

* It appears that while the total number of persons reported as of 
gainful occupations at the census of 1870 was but 18 per cent greater 
than the corresponding number at 1860, the number engaged in trade 
and transportation had increased in tlie decade 44 per cent. "Some 
Results of the Census." (Soc. Science Journal, 1873, p. 91.) 



314 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gain among 
a greater numher of dealers.''''^ 

" Competition in retail markets," says Prof. Cairnes, "is 
condncted nnder conditions which may be described as of 
greater friction than those which exist in wholesale trade. 
In the wholesale market the sellers and purchasers meet 
together in the same place, affording thus to each other re- 
ciprocally the opportunity of comparing directly and at 
once the terms on which they are severally disposed to 
trade. In retail dealing it is otherwise. In each place of 
sale there is but one seller ; and though it is possible to 
compare his terms with the prices demanded elsewhere by 
others, this can not always be done on the moment, and 
may involve much inconvenience and delay. A purchaser 
frequently finds it on the whole better to take the word of 
the seller for the fairness of the price demanded, than to 
verify his statements by going on the occasion of every pur- 
chase to another shop. It is probable, indeed, that if the 
charge be excessive, the purchaser will in time come to 
discover this, and may then transfer his custom to a cheap- 
er market. This shows that competition is not inoperative 
in retail trade, but it shows also the sort of friction under 
which it works, and helps to "explain what has often been re- 
marked upon, and what, as a matter of fact, it is practical- 
ly important people should bear in mind — the different 
prices at which the same commodity is frequently found 
to sell within a very limited range of retail dealing, al- 
most in what we may call the same market. This is one 
circumstance that distinguishes retail from wholesale trad- 
ing. The other lies in the advantage which his superior 
knowledge gives the seller over the buyer in the transac- 
tion taking place between them — -a superiority which has 
no counterpart in the relations of wholesale dealers. In 
the wholesale market buyer and seller are upon a strictly 
equal footing as regards knowledge of all the circumstances 

^Pol. Econ. i. 391, 393. 



FRICTION m RETAIL PRICES. 315 

calculated to affect the price of the commodity dealt 
in. . . . The circums-tances of retail dealing are here 
ao-ain in contrast with those of the wholesale trade. The 
transactions do not take place between dealers possessing, 
or with the opportunities of acquiring, equal knowledge 
respecting the commodities dealt in, but between experts 
on one side, and, on tlie other, persons in most cases whol- 
ly ignorant of the circumstances at the time affecting the 
market. Between persons so qualified the game of ex- 
change, if the rules be rigorously enforced, is not a fair 
one ; and it has consequently been recognized universally 
in England, and very extensively among the better classes 
of retail dealers in Continental countries, as a principle of 
commercial morality, that the dealer should not demand 
from his customer a higher price for his conniiodity than 
the lowest he is prepared to take.' Retail buying and 
selling is (sic) thus made to rest upon a moral rather than 
an economical basis ; and, there can be no doubt, for the 
advantage of all concerned."^ 

Prof. Cairnes elsewhere refers to " the excessive fric- 
tion in the action of competition in retail dealing." " The 
sluggish action of competition in this department of indus- 
try" (p. 132). 

Ill, The laborer maybe put at a disadvantage through 
the incidence^ of taxation. 

^ " In the great majority of cases, nowadays, the debate about th« 
value of an article, called by Adam Smith, the Jdggling of the market, 
is confined to wholesale purchases and sales. But a generation or two 
ago, the habit of bargaining in matters of retail trade was general. It 
still is a custom in many European countries. It is all but universal 
in the East."— Prof. Rogers, Pol. Econ., p. 186. "The value of any 
thing in Spain is what you can get for it ; consequently, every pur- 
chase, from the most expensive articles of luxury down to the poorest 
vegetable, entails a system of haggling and bargaining." — Mr. Ffrench's 
R<^port on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 606. 

2 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy, pp. 128-30. 

' I do not speak here of the degree of taxation. Whether govern, 
ment shall take much or take little is a political question. In some 
countries, even in the present day, the only limit to exactions appears 



316 TEE WAGES QUEST rOK 

A theory of taxation wliicli has been nrp^ed somewhat 
widely asserts the entire indifference of the place or the 
subject of imposition. Instead of looking to the individ- 
ual citizen to pay his personal contribution, in proportion 
to his means, towards the support of government, it is pro- 
posed to levy upon the agencies of production, or upon 
commodities in the course of exchange, or upon certain 
species of property visible and tangible, without considera- 
tion of the persons thus first called upon to pay the taxes, 
in the assurance that the burden will, through the opera- 
tion of " the laws of trade," be diffused, in the course of 
time, equally over the entire community.' 

We have, however, reached a point of view from whicli 
we can discern the fallacy of this doctrine. The diffusion 
theory rests upon the assumption of perfect competition. 
It is true only under the conditions which secure the com- 
plete mobility of capital and labor. Just so far as unj 
class of the community is impeded in its resort to its best 
market by ignorance, poverty, fear, inertia, just so far is 
it possible that the burden of taxation may rest where it 
first falls. In the language of Prof. Rogers,'' " taxes tend 
to remain upon the person who immediately pays them ; 
or, in other words, it requires an effort, which is made 
with varying degrees of ease or difficulty, to shift a tax 
which is paid by the first payer to the shoulders of an- 



te be the limit of the people's means, and all above bare subsistence is 
carried away by the strong arm of the law, to be spent in pomp, lux- 
ury, or war. But this, as has been said, is a political question, and so 
long as taxation presses on each class of the community with weij^ht 
proportional to its strengrtli, I do not see that the economist can take 
account of the amount, any more than of the objects, of such expendi- 
tures. 

^ " I hold it to be true that a tax laid in any place is like a pebble 
fallinpr into and making a circle in a lake, till one circle produces and 
fjives motion to another, and the whole circumference is agitated from 
the centre." — Speech of Lord Mansfield, 1766, on the right of Parlia- 
ment to tax the colonies. 

2 Cobden and Political Opinion, pp. 83, 84. 



DIFFUSION-THEORY OF TAXATION. 317 

other." ]^ot only is the effort of the first payer made 
with varying degrees of ease or difficulty, but the resist- 
ance of the other person, on to whose shoulders he seeks 
to shift his own burden, may be of any degree of effective- 
ness, powerful, intelligent, and tenacious, or weak, igno- 
rant, and spasmodic. The result of the struggle will de- 
pend on the relative strength of the two parties ; and as 
the two parties are never precisely the same in the case of 
two taxes, or two forms of the same tax, it must make a 
difference upon wliat subjects duties are laid, what is the 
severity of the imposition, and at what stage of produc- 
duction or exchange the tax is collected.' There can, I 
think, be no question that under the old regime a direc- 
tion was given to taxation in every country of Europe, ex- 
cept Switzerland and Plolland, which was intended to re- 
lieve the law-making classes from their just share of the 
expenses of government ; and there can, I think, be as 
little doubt that, clumsy and unintelligent as was much of 
the financiering of those evil days, in this respect at least 
the intention of the law-making classes was effectually ac- 
complished. It is the opinion of Prof. Rogers, than 
whom, certainly, no man living is more competent to 
judge of such a point, that the real weight of taxation 
during the great continental wars of England, fell upon 
and was endured by the poorer classes.'^ If this was true 
of England, where the common people never lost their 
power of self-assertion, what shall be said of the misera 
plehs C07itribuen8 of the Continent ? 

Speaking of France under the old regime, Sir Arch. 
Alison says : " Heavy taxes on the farmer, from which the 
clergy and nobility were exempt, aggravated by the arbi- 
trary manner in which their amount was fixed by the in- 
tendant, and the vexatious feudal privileges of the landed 
proprietors, depressed the laboring classes, and rendered 

* The Nation, June lltli, 1874. 

» Notes to Adam Siaitli, Wealth of Nations, i. 349, 



318 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

prosperity and good management little more than a signal 
for increased assessment. Such was the accumulated effect 
of these burdens that the produce of an acre being esti- 
mated under the old reghne at £3 2s. Y^Z., the king drew 
£1 18s. 4^., the landlord 19s. Sc:?., and to the cultivator was 
left the miserable pittance of 5s., or one twelfth of the 
whole, and one eighth of the proprietor's share ; or if the 
proprietor cultivated his own land, the king drew £1 18s. 
Aid., and the proprietor only £1 4s. 2>d. Whereas in Eng- 
land the produce of an acre being calculated at £8, the 
rent may be stated at £1 10s., land tax and poor rates 
10s., and there remains £6 for the farmer, being twelve 
times the amount of the public burdens, and four times 
that of the rent to the landlord." (On Population, i. 412.) 
And the same writer (Hist. Europe, xxii. 490, 491) 
quotes from Balleydier as follows respecting the taxation 
of Plungary prior to 1848 : 

" To such a length had the abuse of these privileges 
been carried that the nobles and their servants paid no 
toll on passing the bridge into Pesth, though it contributed 
one of the principal sources of revenue enjoyed by the 
town. The peasants, bourgeoisie, and mechanics alone 
were burdened with it. The peasant alone paid the hearth- 
tax ; he alone contributed to the expenses of the Diet and 
the county chai-gcs ; he paid the dues of the schoolmasters, 
guards, notaries, clergy, and curates ; he alone kept up the 
roads, the bridges, the churches, the public buildings, the 
dykes, and the canals ; he alone paid the whole war taxes, 
and furnished the recruits to the army ; and in addition 
to all this he was compelled to hand over a ninth of his 
income to his lord, and to give him fifty-two days' service 
in the year. Finally, besides the charges of transporting 
wood for his lord's family, he was burdened exclusively 
with the quartering of soldiers, and he was compelled at ah 
times, and for a merely nominal remuneration, to furnisli 
such to the county authorities or their attendants. The 
Spartan Helots wei"e kings in comparison." 



CHANGES OF TAX-LAW8. 319 

It maj appropriately be added in this connection that 
wliile taxation, unequal in its incidence, may have the 
effect to place the laborer at a disadvantage, frequent 
changes of tax-laws are almost certain to prove prejudi- 
cial to- his interests. We have seen that there is no assur- 
ance that excessive burdens imposed by taxation ill-con- 
sidered o'r intentionally oppressive will be diffiised by the 
course of exchange over the entire community in due pro- 
portion, but it can at least be claimed that there is a ten- 
dency to such a result, however far that tendency may be 
defeated or deferred. That this tendency should even 
begin to operate it is, however, essential that time should 
be given. It is only by a long course that the ameliorat- 
ino- effects looked for in the diffusion of burdens can be 
brought around, if at all. If tax-laws are often to be 
changed, the class which is from any cause already at 
disadvantage is sure to suffer further and increasingly. 
Those who are buying and selling, watching and manipu- 
lating the market, are certain to get all the benefit of the 
remissions, and to recoup themselves for all the substituted 
impositions. Those who are economically weakest, the 
ignorant, the very poor, and those who are distant from 
the centres of information and of trade, will suffer most. 

lY. The wages class may be put at disadvantage by in- 
judicious poor-laws. The subject is a large one, and. I 
must be content with a " fierce abridgment." Let us go 
back at once to the elementary question, Why does the 
laborer work ? Clearly that he may eat. If he may eat 
without it, he will not work. Simple and obvious ; yet the 
neglect or contempt of this truth by the English Parlia- 
ment, between 1767 and 1832, brought the working classes 
to the verge of ruin, created a vast body of pauperism 
which has become hereditary, and engendered vices in the 
whole labor-system of the kingdom which work their evil 
work to this day. The Law of Settlement has already 
been spoken of among the acts restraining labor in its 
resort to market; let us now coAtemplate the English 



320 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

poor-laws as destroying the very disposition of the labor- 
ing class to seek an opportunity to labor. 

By statute of the 27th year of Henry VIII. giving of 
alms was forbidden, and collections for the impotent poor 
were to be made in each parish. By 1st Edward VI. 
bishops were authorized to proceed against persons who 
should refuse to contribute or dissuade others from con- 
tributing. By 5th Elizabeth the justices were made 
judges of what constituted a reasonable contribution. By 
14tli Elizabeth regular compulsory contributions were ex- 
acted. But the more famous act of 43d Elizabeth created 
the permament poor-system of England. By it every 
person was given a legal right to relief, and the body of 
inhabitants were to be taxed for this object.' By sub- 
sequent legislation the burden was thrown entire upon 
the landowners. Voluntary pauperism was vigorously 
dealt with; the able-bodied were compelled to work; while 
by the act of 9th George I. parishes or unions of parishes 
were authorized to buikl workhouses, a residence in which 
might be made the condition of relief. This system, fairly 
administered, reduced the necessary evil of pauperism to 
the minimum. But, unfortunately for the working classes, 
a different theory directed legislation in the latter half of 
the eighteenth century, and a different temper of adminis- 
tration began to prevail. Six acts, passed in the early part 
of the reign of George III., intimated the changed spirit 
in which pauperism was thereafter to be dealt with. This 
spirit found fuller expression in Gilbert's act (22d George 
III.). Guardians were to be appointed to protect the 
poor against the natural parsimony of pari si i officers. 
The workhouse test was repealed for the able-bodied poor. 
Guardians were required to find work for all applicants as 
near their own homes as might be, and to make up, out of 
the rates, any deficiency in wages. By this latter provi- 

' J. W. Willis Bund on Local Taxation, p. 17. 



FOOK-LAWS AND WAGES. 331 

sion, says Sir George Nicliolls/ " the act appears to as- 
sume that there can never be a lack of profitable employ- 
ment, and it makes the guardian of the parish answerable 
for finding it near the laborer's own residence, where, if it 
existed at all, the laborer might surely, by due diligence, 
find it himself. But why — it may be asked — should he 
use such diligence when the guardian is bound to find it 
for him, and take the wdiole responsibility of bargaining 
for wages and making up to him all deficiency? He is 
certain of employment. He is certain of receiving, either 
from the parish or the employer, sufficient for the main- 
tenance of himself and his family; and if he earns a sur- 
plus, he is certain, of its being paid over to him. There 
may be uncertainty with others and in other occupations, 
The farmer, the lawyer, the merchant, the manufacturer, 
however industrious, active, and observant, may labor 
under uncertainties in their several callings ; not so the 
laborer. He , bears, as it were, a charmed life in this 
respect, and is made secure, and that, too, without the 
exercise of care or forethought. Could a more certain 
way be devised for lowering character, destroying self- 
reliance, and discouraging, if not absolutely preventing, 
improvement V 

The experience of England, under the operation of the 
false and vicious principle of Gilbert's act, answers the 
inquiry with which this quotation closes, in the negative. 
By 1832 the principle had been carried logically out to its 
limits in almost universal pauperism. In the case of one 
parish, the collections of the poor-rates had actually ceased, 
because the landlords preferred to give up their rents, the 
clergyman his glebe and tithes, the farmers their tenan- 
cies.^ In numerous other parishes the pressure of the 
poor-rate had become so great that the net rent was re- 
duced one half and more, while it was impossible for land- 
lords to find tenants. The pauper class had been elevated 

» History of the English Poor-Laws, ii. 96, 97. ^ Ibid., p. 353. 



32S THE WAGES QUESTION. 

by a system of liberal relief, unaccompanied by a work- 
house test, far above the condition of the independent 
laborers,' who had only to drop-down npon the rates to be 
better fed, clothed, and lodged than their utmost exer- 
tions could effect while working for hire. Thus not only 
did industry lose its natural reward, but a positive pre- 
mium was put upon indolence, wastefulness, and vice. 
All the incidents of the English system were bad : the 
allowance for each additional child was so much out of 
proportion to the allowance for adults, that the more 
numerous a man's family the better his condition ;^ while 
the allowance for illegitimate children was more liberal 
than for those born in wedlock. 

Such was the system which the wisdom of Parliament, 
under the influence of the squirearchy, substituted for the 
economic law that he that would eat must work. The 
natural effects of this system were wrought speedily and 
completely. The disposition to labor was cut up by the 
roots; all restraints upon increase of population disap 
peared under a premium upon births ; self-respect and 
social decency vanished under a premium upon bastardy.' 
The amount expended in the relief and maintenance of 

* The commissioners of 1832, as the result of extended comparisons, 
found that, while the pauper received 151 ounces of solid food per 
week, the independent laborer received but 122 ounces. 

2 "In some instances," says Dr. Chalmers, " the vestries have felt 
themselves obliged to rent and even to furnish houses for the reception 
of the newly-married couple." — Pol. Econ. 307. 

^ "The English law has abolished female chastity." — Mr. Cowell's 
Report, 

" It may safely be affirmed that the virtue of female chastity does 
not exist among the lower orders of England, except to a certain 
extent among domestic servants, who know that they hold their 
situations by that tenure, and are more prudent in consequence." — Re- 
port of the Commissioners of 1831. 

" In many rural districts it was scarcely possible to meet with a 
young woman who was respectable, so tempting was the parish 
allowance for infants in a time of great pressure." — Martineau, 
Hist. England, iii. 168. 



THE ENGLISH POOR-LAWS. 323 

the poor had risen to £7,036,969, or 10 shillnigs per head 
of the population. In this exigency, which in truth con- 
stituted one of the gravest crises of English history. Parlia- 
ment, by the Poor-Law Amendment Act (4th and 5th 
William TV.), returned to the principle of the earlier laws ; 
that principle being, as expressed by Prof. Senior, that it 
is " the great object of pauper legislation" to render " the 
situation of the pauper less agreeable than that of the in- 
dependent laborer.'" The workhouse test was restored, 
allowances in aid of wages were abolished, paid overseers 
were to be appointed, and a central commission was insti- 
tuted for the due supervision of the system. Illegitimacy 
was discouraged by making the father responsible, instead 
of rewarding the mother, as under the former system. 
The conditions of " settlement" were mitigated so as to 
facilitate the migration of laborers in search of employ- 
ment. 

By this great legislative reform the burden of pauperism, 
notwithstanding that the evil effects of the old system still 
remained in a great degree, had by 1837 become so much 
reduced that the expenditure, per head of the population, 
sank to 5s. ^d. Mr. Baxter in his work on Local Taxa- 
tion'* gives some of the details by counties : 

1834. 1887. 

Sussex 18s. Id. 8s. Id. 

Bedford 16 4 8 

Bucks 16 11 8 8 

Northampton 15 8 8 3 

Suffolk 16 7 9 3 

There is no need to draw, at any length, the moral of 
this episode in the industrial history of England. It is of 
the highest economical importance that pauperism shall 
not be made inviting. It is not necessary that any bru- 
tality of administration shall deter the worthy poor from 
public relief, but, in Prof. Senior's phrase, the situation of 

^ Foreign Poor-Laws, etc., p. 88. 

2 P. 11. 



324 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

the pauper, whether Im or out of the workhouse, should al- 
ways be made less agreeable than that of the independent 
laborer. The workhouse test for all the able-bodied poor, 
and genuine labor up to the limit of sti'ength within the 
workhouse, are imperatively demanded by the interests of 
self-supporting labor. One might, indeed, hesitate to carry 
the labor test quite so far as Pennant observedit in his Second 
Tour in Scotland, where he writes : " The workhouse is 
thinly inhabited, for few of the poor choose to enter : those 
whomever necessity compels are most usefully employed. 
With jpleasure I observed old age., idiocy^ and even in- 
fants of three years of age contrlhuthig to their own sup- 
port hy the pulling of oakum r^ There is no reason that 
I know of, why the principle of the factory acts should not 
be extended to the poor-asylum, to excuse infants of tender 
years from work, or any danger to helpful labor in allow- 
ing repose to old age or idiocy ; but wherever there is a 
possible choice between self-support and public support, 
there the inclination of the poor to labor for their own sub- 
sistence should be quickened by something of a ])enalty, 
though not in the way of cruelty or of actual privation, 
upon the pauper condition. '' All," says Mr. George 
Woodyatt Hastings, " who have administered the Poor 
Law must know the fatal readiness with which those 
hovering on the brink of pauperism believe that they can 
not earn a living, and the marvellous way in which, if the 
test be firmly applied, the means of subsistence will be 
found somehow.'" 

Y. May the laborer be put at disadvantage through 
the form in which his wages are paid ? A great deal of 
public indignation and not a little of the force of law' 
have been levelled at Teuck. How, in an effort to treat 
the wages question systematically, are we to regard this 
practice ? 

' Pinkerton, iii. 197. 

2 Soc. Sc. Transactions, 1871, p. 146. 

^ About sixty acts of the British Parliament have dealt witli Truck. 



THE TRUCK SYSTEM. 335 

To truck (Fr. Troc) is to exchange commodities, to 
barter. The truck system of wages, then, is the barter sys- 
tem introduced between the laborer and his employer. 
What objection can there be to this? How can it be sup- 
posed to injure the laboring class? I shall discuss this 
question at length, not more on account of its intrinsic im- 
portance, than because it affords an excellent practical ap- 
plication of important principles relating to the distri- 
bution of wealth. 

The truck system may take two fonns. First, there 
may be given to the laborer a j^ortion of that which ho 
actually produces, whether that product be suitable to his 
wants or not, leaving him, in the latter event, to exchange 
it as he can for whatever he may desire, food, drink, cloth- 
ing, fuel or shelter. Second, under the truck system 
the laborer may receive, not what he produces, but what 
he is to consume; he is paid in commodities supposed to 
be more or less suited to his wants. 

Both these forms of truck are as old as labor ; but in 
the earliest times they were generally found not separate 
but united. What the workman produced he also de- 
sired to consume, and for his labor in tending sheep and 
cattle, and in sowing and reaping grain, he received wool 
for his clothing, and meat and bread for his food. And so 
to-day are the laborers of many countries mainly paid ; and 
doubtless in the majority of cases the practice is both nec- 
essary and beneficial. But when distinction came to be 
made of labor as agricultural and as mechanical, and 
when employments came to be much subdivided, it would 
happen that a laborer's production was calculated to sup- 
ply but a part only, or perhaps none at all, of his wants ; 
for it might be that an artisan of Birmingham or Shef- 
field would be employed in making an article which he not 
only never used but never even saw used. Hence, if he 
were to be paid in kind, he would be obliged to sell or ex- 
change the same for commodities more suitable to his ne- 
cessities, and this, it will be seen, he might have to do at 



326 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

a very great disadvantage, having no place of trade, no 
business acquaintance, and no time to spend in bartering 
off his wares . So we find, in the fourth year (1464) of 
King Edward lY. of England, an act passed in which oc- 
curs the following : 

" Also whereas, before this Time, in the occupations of 
Cloth-Making, the Laborers thereof have been driven to 
take a great part of their Wages in Pins, Girdles, and other 
nnprofitable wares, under such price that it did not extend 
unto .... therefore it is ordained and established 
that every niaji and woman being cloth-makers, from the 
(said) feast of St. Peter, shall pay to the carders, spinsters, 
and all such other laborers, in any part of the said trade, 
lawful money for all their lawful wages." 

This is the first English act aimed at the truck system. 
Between that and the act of 1st and 2d William IV. (c. 37) 
intervened nearly four centuries, during wdiich this system, 
in one or both its phases, prevailed in respect to a great 
part of English labor, and apparently the British Parlia- 
ment lias not even yet done legislating about it. 

I have said that the second form of truck is where the 
laborer is paid in commodities supposed to be suitable to 
his wants as a consumer, irrespective of the cpiestion 
wdiether he has helped to produce the identical articles or 
similar articles himself. This is done where board is 
given as a part of wages, but truck to this extent was ex- 
pressly excepted' from the prohibitions of the great Eng- 
lish truck act — namely, that of William lY., already re- 
ferred to. Another form of partial payment which is in the 
nature of truck, is the allowance of perquisites and privi- 
leges, such as the keep of a cow, the gleaning of the 
wheat-field, the cutting of turf, and others which we have 
had occasion to mention in speaking of the difficulty of 



* It was made lawful to stop wages on account of victuals dressed or 
prepared under the roof of tlie employ jp and there consumed by the 
artificer. 



BEER AND CIDER TRUCK. 327 

estimating the real wages of the laborer. This kind of 
payment prevails, from the nature of the case, mainly in 
respect to agricultural labor, and agricultural truck was 
not forhidden^ by the act of William IV. One form of 
agricultural truck deserves especially to be noted. It is 
found in the beer or cider allowances so prevalent in Eng- 
land.'^ The farms in that country where such payment is 
not stipulated or is not customary would doubtless be 
found, on a count, to be in a decided minority. In many 
cases the allowance is in amount reasonable, if we assume 
that the use of these drinks in any quantity at all is de- 
sirable ; but in a vast number of instances the figures 
of these allowances as reported are startling to minds 
unfamiliar with the statistics of beer-gardens. In some 
places Mr. Purdy reports' that the men have from 2 to 4 
quarts of beer daily ; women and children half that quan- 
tity. The cider-truck would seem to be carried to a far 
greater extent, Mr, Edward Spender states' that the agri- 
cultural laborers of the cider-producing countries, ])articu- 
larly Herefordshire and Devonshire, receive from 20 to 50 
per cent of their wages in cider ! Eight to twenty pints a day 
he indicates as the actual rana^e.* With such a state of 



*■" Nothing herein contained shall extend to any domestic servant, or 
servant in liiosbandry" (xx.). This exception was due in part to the rea- 
son of the case, and in part, we can not doubt, to the want of political 
power in the agricultural labor class. 

^ The words of the Massachusetts General Court are worthy to be 
commended to the high and mighty Parliament of England. "Whereas 
it is found, by too common and sad experience, in all parts of the 
colony, that the forcing of laborers and other workmen to take wine in 
pay for their labor is a great nursery or preparative to drunkenness and 
unlawful tippling, . . . it is therefore ordered and ordained by this Court 
that no laborer or workman whatsoever shall, after the publication and 
promulgation hereof, be enforced or pressed to take wine in pay for 
his labor." (May 14, 1645.) 

^ Statistical Journal, xxvii. 536. 

* Statistical Journal, xxiv. 333, cf. 339. 

* " In Herefordshire it has happened that a farmer paid his laborers 9 
shillings a week in money, and during harvest-time 9 gallons of cider a 



338 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

tilings, no wonder Mr. Spender can quote the statement of 
a medical gentleman, long resident in the eider district, 
that " the failure of the apple crop has the same favorable 
elfects on the health of the laborer as the go(.»d drainage of 
a parish has on the health of the inhabitants generally." 

But the form of truck which has especially excited the 
opposition of the working classes, and which has been 
stringently prohibited' by law in England, is the furnish- 
ing by the employer to the mechanical laborer, of goods 
for his personal and family consumption, the charges for 
the same being set off against the wages due. It is of 
truck in this sense only that we shall hereafter speak. 

The custom of part-payment in goods, which at one 
time prevailed almost imiversally in many districts in 
England and very generally in the LTuited States, did not 
fail to tind excuse for itself in the supposed advantage of 
both parties. It was claimed that, in many branches of 



week." Mr. Spender's computations assume tliat the cider was a good 
merchantable article. On this point see Heath's Enoflish Peasantry. 
One of the " clergy returns" published in the Report of the Convoca- 
tion of Canterbury on Intemperance, states the allowance of cider to a 
laborer at harvest-time at 21 gallons daily ; another at nearly 3 gallons 
(p. 39). In one of the " workhouse returns" the governor speaks of la- 
borers as " swallowing, some of them, as much as 3 or 4 gallons a 
day." (Ibid., p. 40.) 

1 The Act of 1st and 3d WilHamlV. provides that " in all contracts for 
the hiring of any artificer in any of the trades enumerated, the wages 
of such aitificer shall be made payable in the current coin of the realm, 
and not otherwise." The trades enumerated are the manufactures of 
iron and steel ; the mining of coal or iron, limestone, salt-rock ; the 
working or getting of clay, stone, or slate ; manufactures of salt, bricks, 
tiles, or quarries ; hardware manufactures, textile manufactures, glass, 
china, and earthenware, manufactures of leather, and others. 

There was excepted the right to supply to artificers medicine and 
medical attendance ; fi^el, materials, tools, and implements in mining ; 
also hay, corn, and provender to be consumed by any horse or beast of 
burden employed by the artificer in the occupation ; also, to furnish 
tenements at a rent to be thereon reserved ; also, to advance to arti- 
ficers money to be contributed to friendly societies and savings-banks 
or for relief in sickness, or ior the education of children. 



BAIL WAT AND MINING TRUCK. 329 

industry, the proximity of stores and shops kept by per- 
sons disconnected with the employers coiild not be relied 
on to the degree required for the supply of the laborers' 
wants. This plea was urged with most assurance, and 
probably with the greatest degree of truth, in respect to 
truck-stores for navvies engaged upon canals and rail- 
ways, as the gangs employed on such works are, from the 
nature of the work, continually shifting their place, and 
often pushing into districts settled sparsely or not at all. 
At the same time, evidence was presented in the Com- 
mons Keport on Eailway Laborers (1846) going to show 
that the supposed necessity for truck did not exist even 
here.' But as the building of canals and railways had 
reached no great proportions in 1831, when the act of 1st 
and 2d William lY. prohibiting truck passed, this depart- 
ment of industry was omitted from the enumeration in 
that act, and the truck system was kept up in full vigor 
on the canals and railways of the kingdom long after it 
had ceased elsewhere, or had sunk into an illicit traffic main- 
tained, under disguise and at risk, by the least reput- 
able employers. 

The department of industry which, next to that men- 
tioned, put in the strongest plea for truck, was coal and 
iron mining. In the nature of the case, works of this 
character are found principally at considerable elevations, 
upon difficult and broken ground, and often at consider- 
able distances from market towns."" Hence the proprie- 
tors were not without a show of reason in holding that 
the prompt and sure supply of a large and perhaps fluc- 
tuating body of workmen required that shops for the 
sale of the necessaries of life should be established in im- 
mediate connection with the works themselves. 

' Sir Morton Peto, tlien a great contractor, and one of tlie partners 
of Thomas Brassey, testified that there was no difficulty in provision- 
ing men on tlie most remote sections of railway. (Report, p. 75.) 

** Commons Committee on Payment of Wages Bill, 1854, Report, 

PP: ?'7-9. 



330 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But the opportimity to add to the profits of maniifao- 
tiire the profits, and (through the unscrupulous exercise 
of the influence and authority of the employer) more than 
the ordinary profits, of trade, did not suffer truck to be 
confined to departments of industry presenting so much 
of an excuse for the system as the building of canals and 
railways, and the mining of coal and iron. Truck long 
prevailed, to a vast extent, in connection with many 
branches of manufacture, and in many communities, where 
no reason but the greed of employers existed for the 
practice. Workmen were compelled to buy at the inas- 
ter's store, on pain of discharge. Sometimes hints accom- 
plished the object ; sometimes threats were necessary ; 
sometimes examples had to be made. However strong 
the disapprobation of the workmen, or of the larger com- 
munity around, the profits of truck Avere so enormous as 
to overcome the scruples and the shame of many em- 
ployers. Those profits were five-fold. First, the ordi- 
nary profit of tlie retail trader, large as that is, and 
larger as we know it becomes, in proportion to the igno- 
rance and poverty of the customer. Second, there was a 
great diminution of ordinary expenses, due to the com- 
pulsion exercised. The trader, who was also the manufac- 
turer, did not have to resort to costly advertising to draw 
custom, to maintain an attractive establishment in a con- 
venient location, or to keep up an efficient body of clerks 
and attendants. The only advertisement needed was the 
ominous notice to trade there : the store might be the 
merest barn, the service might be reduced to a degree 
involving the greatest inconvenience, and even hardship, 
to the customer.' Third, it seems to be abundantly 



' Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, in his exhaustive evidence before the 
Select Committee of 1854, stated that the truck-shops were so small, 
and the persons retained to serve customers so few, that the women 
attending to get supplies for their families, on the credit of their hus- 
bands' wajres, frequently could not enter, but that fifty or one hundred 
would be seen collected outside, wailing their turq to be served. Hg 



TRUCK PRACTICES. 331 

proved, by the evidence before the several commissions 
and committees, that the charges at the truck -shops were 
generally higher by 5, 10, or 15 per cent than at the ordi- 
nary retail stores. Fourth, the employer, having the 
absolute control of the laborers' wages, incurred no bad 
debts such as eat up the profit of the open trader. Fifth, 
the quality of the goods furnished was likely to be as 
best suited the interests of the employer, who, for the 
best of reasons, feared no loss of custom. 

Such was truck in England before the act of 1st and 2d 
William lY. ; and there can be no question in the mind of 
any candid person who peruses the painful evidence ad- 
duced in the course of the several inquiries which took 
place before and after that legislation, and who carefully 
considers the nature of the case, that, whether the system 
be intrinsically mischievous or not, abuses' shameful and 

had himself seen women with children in their arms standing in the 
open air in bad weather, and on asking had been told they had been 
waiting for hours. (Report, p. 8.) 

Other witnesses placed the time for which a woman might thus 
be compelled to wait at the truck-shop at two, four, or six hours, or 
even longer. (Report, pp.43, 128, 156-7,322,830, 371.) Meanwhile 
the children not in arms were locked up at home. 

Mr. J. Fellows, Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths at Bilston, 
but also, it ought to be mentioned, a retail grocer, stated that in six- 
teen years he had had occasion to record a number of deaths, which he 
placed, from memory, at eleven, of young children burned in the ab- 
sence of their mothers while waiting at these shops. (Report, p. 43). 

' Sir Archibald Alison appeared before the Committee of 1854 as the 
champion of truck. 

"I think," he said, "generally speaking, the people are furnished 
with subsistence, and with articles of use for themselves and their 
families infinitely better than from the stores of private dealers." — Re- 
port, p. 229. 

" From all that I have seen I think the establishment of stores has 
been followed by a great improvement in the condition of the work- 
men." — Ibid. 

" I have known instances of workmen going miles to the master's 
stores in preference to dealing with the private shops." — P. 234. 
f. . , . the immense advantage of the truck system in compelling 



832 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

even horrible were perpetrated under it. Doubtless there 
was much passionate exaggeration by men smarting under 
its evils, as there was in respect to the abuses of the old 
unreformed jails ; to the wrongs of American slavery ; to 
the outrages of the Confederate prison-pens ; but if the 
simple truth respecting truck in Enghmd in the early days 
of this century could be written out, it would form one of 
the most painful chapters in the long and dreary story of 
" man's inhumanity to man." 

Another wrong which it is charged is done to laborers 
through the form of their payment, is by the so-called 
rental by the employer to the laborer, of the tools and 
machines necessary to production, the wages being stop- 
ped to the amount of the " rent." This alleged abuse 
attracted attention from economists and legislators in 
England paiticularly in connection with the hosiery man- 
ufacture, and we will, for brevity, draw our illustrations 
wholly from that branch of industry. 

The system of Frame Rents, as exposed by the evidence 
before the Commission of 1844 and the Committee of 
1855, M-as this : 

Instead of the employer hiring laborers to work upon 
his own machines, paying them net wages for their ser- 
vice, the knitting is let out to middlemen upon contracts ; 
" the middleman supplies the workman with frames and 
other machinery, sometimes belonging to himself and 
sometimes hired of the manufacturer or other owner, and 
when he settles with the workman, he deducts out of the 
gross price per dozen of the work performed, lirst, a sum 

tlie workman to spend a large portion of his earnings in food for himself 
and his family." — P. 245. 

" I think the workmen in the great manufactories and collieries are 
just like a great ill-disciplined army. It is just as impossible to make 
them dispose of their money properly as it would be to provide an army 
with adequate subsistence if you were to abolish the commissariat and 
pay every man in money, and let him buy his provisions where he 
pleased."— Pp. 237, 238. " 



FRAME BENTS. 333 

as rent for the use of the frame ; secondly, a sum for 
winding tlie yarn, which is a necessary operation for each 
workman ; a third sum to remunerate himself for the use 
of the premises where the work is performed, and for the 
standing-room of the frame ; and a fourth for his trouble 
and loss of time in procuring and conveying to the work- 
man the materials to be manufactured, for his responsibili- 
ty to the manufacturer for the due return of the materials 
when manufactured, for superintending the work itself, 
and for his pains in sorting the goods when made, and in 
redelivering them at the warehouse of the manufacturer." 
The language quoted is that of the Committee of 1855. 

That this system of gross wages, with deductions to be 
made for the use of machinery employed and on the other 
accounts specified, was not necessary to protect the owners 
of the machinery was abundantly proved by the fact that 
in trades requiring the use of even more costly and deli- 
cate machinery, the plan of clear net wages prevailed. 
The real reason for the frame-rent system, as brought out 
unmistakably by the evidence, was the profit to be made 
from the use of the frames, owned partly by the manufac- 
turers and partly by the middlemen. This was admitted 
by the manufacturers themselves, who even claimed that 
but for this profit they could not carry on their business in 
a depressed condition of trade.' 

'Just as Sir Archibald Alison admitted, the masters made use of 
ilie opportunities of the truck-system. Thus be speaks of "periods 
of great distress, when the masters are driven to be sharp icith their 
fnrnisldngs." (Eeport of tlie Committee of 1854, p. 232.) " I have no 
doiibt tliat under these circumstances, during these periods of distress, 
they sometimes furnish inferior articles, at least to what they have 
furnished before." .... The complaints which I have heard 
have almost always been complaints ahout measure ; or, in some in- 
stances, I have heard complaints, in periods of distress, that the quali. 
ty of the goods was inferior." .... I think when a master is 
receiving high prices for his articles, for iron and coal, then his 
pockets are full of money, he is in affluent circumstances, and he is 
not, therefore, under the necessity of being strict with his furnishings ; 



834 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

The fact of rents so liigli as to make this profit often 
enormons was abundantly j) roved. Mr, Mnggeridge pre- 
sented authentic accounts of transactions where the an- 
nual rent charged approached, equalled, or even exceeded 
the value of the frames. Thus one workman in 22 years 
paid as rent upon a frame Avortli but £8 or £9 between 
£170 and £180,' Another paid ninepence a week for 30 
years, on a frame costing at the beginning but £7, and 
]-equiring but £6 or £7 for repairs during the entire 
period. Still, again, Mr. William Biggs, a member of the 
Committee of 1855, had testified before the Commission 
of 1844 that during the two years 1835-36 his firm owned 
£8000 of frames ; that the rents amounted to £5100, 
which, after deducting 5 per cent interest per annum on 
the capital invested, and the cost of all repairs and inciden- 
tal expenses, left a clear profit of £1050, or 24^ per cent 
for the two years. 

Such was the system by the admission of those inte- 
rested in its maintenance. But there can be no question 
that abuses were easily perpetrated under it. " The 
amount of this deduction," says Mr. Mnggeridge,^ " is 
regulated by no fixed rule or principle whatever ; it is not 
dependent upon the value of the frame, upon the amount 
of money earned on it, or on the extent of the work 
made ; it has differed in amount at different times, and 
now does so in different places ; the j'outhf ul learner or 
apprentice pays the same rate from his scanty earnings as 

that is to say, w7ien. trade is good, lie gives good measure, he gives the 
best articles, and is liberal with his workmen ; he does not feel the 
pressure himself. If in bad times he is out at elbow and feels the 
pressure, as he always does in a monetary crisis, then he is obliged to 
be more strict with his workmen, and then complaints are made." 
There is something beautiful in this Tory confidence in human nature, 
leading to the assurance that masters will never cheat their workmen 
in measure or quality unless it is positively necessary to save them- 
selves. 

' Report of the Committee of 1855, p. 160. 

' Ibid. 



TRUCK AND LA188EZ FAIRE. 335 

tlie most expert and skilful workman in the trade from 
his of four-fold the amount." Moreover, the workman, 
obliged to hire the machine if he would have employment 
at all, was compelled, not infrequently, to pay the rent 
not only when prevented by sickness from labor, but also 
when no work was furnished him by the middleman, who 
had a direct interest not only in " spreading the work over 
a greater number of frames than were requisite,'" the 
amount given out being, accordingly, in some cases, " what 
would be three full days' work in a week, in others four, 
in some as little as two,'"' but also in keeping inferior ma- 
chines of antiquated pattern worn to the very edge of 
absolute inefficiency, since the less each machine could 
perform, the larger the number which would be required ; 
and the more hands he could hold in dependence on him 
for an inadequate occupation, the more complete his control 
over these unfortunates ; the more meagre the living they 
were able to get off their frames, the less likely they were 
to have either the spirit or the material means to remove. 



I have given so much space to the questions of Truck 
and Frame Kents, both because of their prominence in 
the history of labor and in economical literature, and be- 
cause they afford illustrations of certain very important 
principles in the philosophy of wages. 

To the appeals of the working classes for legislation 
abolisliing these systems, the economists of the Manches- 
ter school have replied with the doctrine of laissez faire. 
Asserting, as they did in their contest for free trade, the 
self-sufficiency of capital, they felt bound to vindicate their 
consistency by asserting the self-sufficiency of labor. To 
them truck and frame-rents were a mode of ascertaining 
the wages of labor ; and they deemed the hours and me- 



' Report of the Committee of 1855, pp. 163,164, cf. p. 23. 
2 Ibid., p. 163, cf. p. 24. 



336 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

tliods of labor and the amount and kind of wages mat- 
ters to be left to employers and employed, i subject only to 
the " law of supply and demand." By the operation of 
this law, they claimed, the employer gets the laborer's ser- 
vices for the least sum possible under the conditions of 
supply ; and on the other, the laborer secures the greatest 
sum for his services consistent with the existing demand. 
The employer's least price and the laborer's greatest price 
are therefore the same, and no injustice can be done so 
long as both parties are left free by law. 

It is, however, fairly a question whether the writers and 
statesmen of this school, in their valorous disposition to 
stand by their principle in every ease where issue on it 
might be joined, have not mistaken their ground in the 
matter of frame-rents and truck. Surely, freedom of 
contract, on which the Manchesterians insist so strongly, 
does not involve freedom to break contracts or to evade 
contracts ; nor does the most advanced advocate of laissez 
yb;«r<? propose that breach of contract shall be left to be pun- 
ished by natural causes — that is, by the loss of business repu 
tation, by the withdrawal of confidence, or by public repro- 
bation. But if exactitude of performance may be enforced 
by law without any interference with industrial freedom, 
M'hy, pray, may not precision in terms be required by the 
law, as the very tii'st condition of a due and just enforcement 
of contracts? Precision in terms is, however, manifestly 
incompatible, in the very nature of the case, with truck ; 
for if the employer says to the laborer, " 1 will pay you for 
your work twenty shillings a week, but yon shall take it 
in commodities at my prices," he does not in fact agree 
how much he will pay the laborer ; the use of the term 
twenty shillings becomes purely deceptive : it may mean 
more or less according as the employer chooses to fix his 
prices at the time ; the laborer can not tell what his wages 
really are ; the law can not tell, and therefore can not enforce 

' Fawcett's Speeches, p. 130. 



TRUCK AND LAISSEZ FAIBE. 337 

the laborer's right if litigated.' Perhaps we can not say that 
precision in terms is incompatible with the very nature of 
the system of machine rents ; but there is ample evidence 
to prove that it has been so in fact, and therefore the law, 
which is bound to enforce the contract, may justly demand 
that the contract shall not contain an element unsuscep- 
tible of exact determination. This is not interference 
with freedom of contract, but with looseness and uncer- 
tainty of contract, or with the power of one party to a 
contract to break, evade, or pervert its terms. 

But I am not anxious to reconcile the prohibition of 
truck and machine rents with laissez /aire. The autho- 
rity accorded to that precept is not, in my opinion, to be 
justified on strictly economical principles. 

We have previously (p. 168-9) discussed the principles 
on which it should be judged whether a law prohibitive or 
regulative in form really impairs competition, and pre- 
vents the resort of labor to its market. It was there seen 
that such a measure, though unquestionably obstructive 
as against a supposed pre-existing condition of perfect 
practical freedom, might, by removing important moral 
or intellectual obstacles to free action, which actually exist 
in human society as it is, have the effect to promote, and 
not retard, industrial movement. 

]^ow, let us ap23ly this principle to a proposed law in re- 
gulation or restraint of truck. It is, say Mr. Bright and 
Prof. Fawcett, an interference with freedom of contract 
and an obstruction to trade, and therefore mischievous — 



' For instance, suppose in a truck establisliment a workman to die 
having undisputed claims on the employer, for work done, to the nomi- 
nal amount of 100 shillings : what amount would his widow be en- 
titled to recover in money at law, or would the employer be entitled to 
pay the debt into court in groceries and provisions, in quantities 
and at prices to suit himself ? If the man had lived, the 100 shillings 
would have been paid, wholly or in part, in truck. His death certainly 
does not change the nature of his claim ; yet is it conceivable that a 
court should award a payment in kind ? 



388 THE WAGES qVESTlON. 

laissez faire, laissez •passer. But is it really or only form- 
ally obstructive ? There will not be absolute freedom of 
movement with it. Granted, But is there absolute free- 
dom of movement without it ? Assuredly not. Shall 
not, then, the question be, whether there will be more 
freedom with or without such a law % 

Now, if we ask the question respecting truck and frame- 
rents in England as they were in the Urst half of the cen- 
tury, it must, I think, be answered that interference with 
the formal freedom of contract in tliese particulars served 
to enhance, in a most important degree, the substantial 
freedom of movement among the laboring classes. The 
laborer's practical ability to seek his best market is made 
up of a material element — the means of transportation and 
present subsistence — and of intellectual and moral elements 
quite as essential, the knowledge of the comparative ad- 
vantages of the different occupations and locations offering 
themselves, and the courage to break away from place and 
custom to seek his fortune elsewhere. Ignorance and fear 
keep far more men in a miserable lot than does the sheer 
physical difficulty of getting from place to place, and sus- 
taining life meanwhile. 

At the laborer's knowledge of the comparative advan- 
tages of different occupations and locations, the truck 
and machine-rent systems struck a deadly blow. In addi- 
tion to the inevitable difficulties in determining the real 
wages of labor, which were detailed in Chapter II., this 
system introduced a new and most hopeless element of un- 
certainty. The laborer's wages, paid nominally in money, 
were to be converted into commodities for his consump- 
tion, by an illicit process, at rates governed by the j)leasure 
of the individual employer at the pai'ticular time. The 
truck system was maintained for the purpose chiefly, as 
was admitted, of enabling the emjDloyers to " sweat" their 
laborers' wages, as counterfeiters " sweat" the coin of the 
realm. It was claimed that in this way employers might 
make themselves good, if the nominal wages they were 



TRUCK BLINDFOLDS THE LABORER. ■ 339 

paying were too liigli, more easily than tliey could obtain 
a reduction in the nominal \vages themselves. Moreover, 
the degree to which wages should be thus reduced would 
depend upon the rapacity or the necessities of individual 
employers, and also upon the state of manufacture and 
trade.' The great ilexibility of these charges was univer- 
sally admitted ; and, indeed, the readiness with which 
they could be adapted, in form and degree, to the times 
and exigencies of the master's business was made one of 
the chief recommendations. 

If workmen are to seek their own interests, they must 
know them. Every thing that tends to simplify wages 
makes it easier for the laborer to dispose of his service to 
the highest advantage. Every thing that tends to compli- 
cate wages puts the laborer at disadvantage. A system 
of gross wages, with deductions "regulated by no fixed 
rule or principle whatever" (Muggeridge), varying with 
times and places, and, as Sir A. Alison admits, varying 
with the state of trade and the disposition of employers, 
makes it impossible for the most enlightened workman to 
act intelligently respecting his interests, while the unedu- 
cated workman loses his reckoning completely : his senses 
are deceived, and he is put wholly at the mercy of the ex- 
tortioner.* 

But it is said the workman may not, indeed, be able 
to compute with exactness his net wages and those of his 
fellows, through all this system of allowances and deduc- 
tions and payments in kind ; but he surely can appreciate 
the result so far as his own comfort and well-being are 

' See Sir A. Alison's remarkable admissions on this point, quoted in 
note to page 333. 

* " This is a great oppression," quoth Arthur Young. " Farmers and 
gentlemen keeping accounts with the poor is a great abuse. So many 
days' work for a cabin, so many for a potato-garden, so many for keep- 
ing a horse, and so many for a cow, are clear accounts which a poor 
man can understand well ; but furtlier it ought not to go, — and when 
he has worked out what he has of this sort, the rest of his work ought 
punctually to bo paid him every Saturday night." — Pinkerton, iii. 815. 



340 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

concerned ; he surely knows whetlier he is well off or 
not ; and if he feels himself wronged, he will seek a bet- 
ter employer. But how, I ask, is he to judge in ad- 
vance, under such a system of combined truck and ma- 
chine rents as oppressed the framework-knitters of Eng- 
land hfty years ago, whether his condition would be more 
tolerable under another master or in another place ? 
Suppose him to have the rare intelligence and enter 
prise to ascertain the gross wages paid by other employers, 
perhaps in distant localities, and to lind some more 
favorable than his own, how can he have the slightest as- 
surance that greater severity in the administration of the 
system of stoppages and deductions, and greater greed in 
pursuing the profits of truck, might not make the dif- 
ference, and perchance more than the difference, in nomi- 
nal rates? He can not tell until he has tried, and how 
often would a workman, on such a narrow margin of liv- 
ing, and it may be with a family, be able to change em- 
ployers and shift his place in order to better his lot ? 
How surely would he, after one or two bitter disap- 
pointments, relinquish the effort, and sink without a strug- 
gle into his miserable place, getting what wages he could, 
and taking for them what he might, at " the master's 
store," The fact is, the system of truck and machine 
rents, as administered in England in the early parfof the 
century, completely hlindfolded the workman, and left 
him to grope about in search of his true interest, in peril 
of pitfalls and quagmires, or, as was most likely, to sub- 
mit in sullen despair to every indignity and injury of the 
position in which he found himself. 

Surely, then, we are entitled to say that laws in re- 
straint of these practices differ from those other laws af- 
fecting labor which have been described in this chapter, 
in the one all-important particular, that the latter were 
intended to diminish that mobilit}^ by which laborers 
could seek their best market, while the former have the 
effect to make competition more easy and certain. 



IS TRUCK EVER JUSTIFIABLE? 341 

Is truck, then, always subject to economical censure 1 
I answer, Ko. Truck is a form of barter ; and he would 
be a bold man who should saj that barter is always and 
everywhere prejudicial. When truck arises naturally, is 
compatible with the general usages of exchange, and is 
maintained in good faith by common consent, it may not 
only be unobjectionable but highly advantageous to all 
classes.' When, however, truck is forced upon a body of 
impoverished and ignorant workmen against the general 
usages of exchange, and maintained by intimidation as 
the means of " sweating" their wages, and keeping them 
down to the barest subsistence and under an incapacity to 
migrate, then truck becomes a horrid wrong and outrage. 
This varying aspect of truck, according to the circum^ 
stances and character of the community among which it is 
introduced, exemplifies the futility of setting up as economi- 
cal principles what are in truth mere rules of expediency. 

Thus, if barter be the general condition of exchanges 
in a new community, as it ordinarily is in the scarcity of 
currency, we may fairly say that it constitutes no special 
hardship to the laboring classes that they have to receive 
their wages in kind. Doubtless, in the further develop- 
ment of society and industry, the introduction of money 
payments in such a community will prove a real and 
great industrial advantage to all classes. Doubtless, also, 
the wages class, as presumably the poorest class, and that, 
also, the members of which have least time and oppor- 
tunity for rendering the commodities they may chance to 
receive in payment, into the commodities they desire to 
consume, would .i)e most helped by such an advance. 



' M. Ducarre's report notices with approbation the attempt of the 
Orleans Kailway Company to supply their 14,000 employees with food 
and clothing. The results seem to show that the workmen thus ob- 
tained their supplies thirty per cent cheaper than they could have 
done at the shops. There is no reason wliy such enterprises should 
not be carried out to a much greater extent, to the highest advantage 
of employers and workmen, and with general consent. 



343 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Yet, prior to that consummation, the wages class, or the 
economist speaking for them, could scarcely make com- 
plaint that they were obliged to share in the general in- 
convenience, even thougli, from their industrial position, 
they might feel it more severely than others ; or demand 
that exemption from truck be secured them by law. In- 
deed, in such a general condition of exchange, it is quite 
conceivable that a class which should be enabled to en- 
force money payments to itsslf might thus secure an un> 
due advantage which would be resented by others as ob- 
tained at their expense. An amusing illustration of this 
is furnished by Gov. Winthro]) in his History of New-Eng- 
land, as follows : 

" One Kichard , servant to one "Williams, of 

Dorchester, being come out of service, fell to work at his 
own hand, and took great wages above others, and would 
not work but for ready money. By this means, in a year 
or a little more, he had scraped together about twenty- 
five pounds, and then returned, with his prey, into Eng- 
land, speaking evil of the country by the way," etc., etc. 
(Yol. ii. 98, 99.) The good governor notes with apparent 
gusto the fact that he was met by the cavaliers and eased 
of his money — his prey — on his arrival. 

But if we come, now, to consider a state of industrial 
society in which exchanges are generally effected through, 
the use of money, and inquire as to the results to a single 
class of the community of being reduced, through some 
force operating upon them wlien in a position of disad- 
vantage, to accept payment for their services in commodi- 
ties' instead of currency, those, at least, who discard the 



' Clearly tlie evil, if there is any evil in the system, will be some- 
what according to the variety of the articles thus forced upon the la- 
borer. The greater that variety the greater his disadvantage. One of 
the arfjuments against abolishing or abating apfricultural truck has 
been that the arranirement was generally restricted to " one, two, or 
three distinct things." — Testimony of Mr. Tremenheere before the 
Committee of 1854. Report, p. 103. 



sow TRUCK MAT BE A HARDSHIP. 343 

theory of diffusion can easily see that wrong amounting 
to robbery might be wrought by this means. To deny to 
one class the advantage they would naturally derive from 
the introduction of a universal " standard of value and 
medium of exchange," while allowing it to the classes 
with which that single class is to compete for the posses- 
sion of wealth, would be not uidike prohibiting to one 
merchant the use of the railway, and sending him back to 
the stage-coach, while his competitors were permitted to 
use the telegraph and the steam-car. So long as the coach 
was common to all, none had equitable cause of complaint 
of the want of a better means of transportation. The hard- 
ship, such as it was, lay in the constitution of things. 
When the steam-car and telegraph came, they did not bene- 
fit all alike ; on the contrary, they tended to inequality ;^ 
to make the great greater, the small, by comparison at least, 
smaller, yet no one could rightfully charge blame in that he 
received less than others of the great addition to human 
well-being. It would be quite another thing, however, 
were one individual or class to be prohibited from par- 
ticipating, in his measure, in what should be the gain of 
all. This would be ground for complaint ; this would 
be gross, palpable injustice. And such a wrong was that 
truck against which the statute of 1st and 2d William TV. 
was levelled. Truck prevailed, not because it consisted with 
the general system of exchange in the country at the time, 
not because it was for the convenience of both parties, 
not from any scarcity of currency to allow cash pay- 
ments, but, in the vast majority of instances, it had been 
forced'' upon the working classes simply and solely be- 

* The effects of railways in taking the life out of small country 
towns, and drawing trade and manufactures to junctions and termini, 
are too familiar to need illustration. 

* In some cases even the pretence of adapting the commodities, in 
which the laborer was paid, to his wants was abandoned, and the la- 
borer was paid in wliatever was most convenient to the employer. 
Evi<ience was given before the Committee of 1854 that workmen were 



344 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

cause it enabled tlie employers to add the profits of trade 
to the profits of iiiaimfacturc ; because it kept the laborers 
always poor and in debt, and diminished the ease, or prac- 
tically destroyed the possibility, of migration. 

sometimes forced to receive such an excess of flour, for instance, as to 
have to pay their rent in this article, of course at inconvenience and 
with a loss, (Report, p. 6.) 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

WHAT MAY HELP THE WAGES CLASS IN ITS COMPETITION 
FOR THE PKODUCTS OF INDUSTRY. 

In Chapter III. were set forth certain causes which go 
to heighten the efficiency of labor and increase the product 
of industry. Under the present title I 'shall have occasion 
to speak of causes, some of them the same, as operating to 
give the wage-laborer a larger share of that product, with- 
out reference to its absolute amount. 

Bearing in mind still that it is competition in the full 
sense of that word, involving as it does the strong desire 
and the persistent effort to buy in the cheapest and sell in 
tlie dearest market, which alone is needed to give the 
wages class the liighest remuneration which the existing 
conditions of industry will allow, we can not find difficulty 
in enumerating the principal helps to this end.' These are : 

I. Frugality. All capital is the result of saving ; 
and the frugality of the working classes, contributing to 
the increase of the wealth available for the purposes of 
industry, secures indirectly an increase of production. 

^ Mr. Mill says : " When the object is to raise the permanent condi- 
tion of a people, i~niall means do not merely produce small effects, they 
produce no effect at all." (Pol. Econ., i. 459.) The remark ir^ just, but 
is perhaps liable to be misunderstood. Causes which, when contem- 
]ilated as operating in a given moment, appear so small as 1o be incon- 
siderable, may, if they operate continuously in any direction, produce 
great effects ; but then such causes cau not, in a philosophical view, be 
considered small. 



346 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But we liave here only to do witli the fact that, without 
reference to any increase of production, the workman's 
frugality gives him a distinct advantage, rendering com- 
petition on his side, in one degree, more effective. No 
matter how clearly workingmen may discern their interest 
in a prompt resort to another market, whether that im- 
ply a change of occupation or of place, or both, without 
some savings ont of their past earnings they must e'en 
say, with the " Third Citizen" in Coriolanus, " We have 
the power in ourselves to do it ; l)ut it is a power that we 
have no power to do." No human thought can distin- 
guish the several parts of ignorance and of penury in the 
immobility of agricultural labor in the West of England ; 
but it can not be doubted that the poverty which has 
existed among that class since the Napoleonic wars has 
contributed largely to the miserable result. Their scanty 
earnings have rendered it extremely difficult for them to 
make any savings out of their wages ; the lack of savings 
has placed them at the mercy of their employers by ren- 
dering it extremely difficult for them to escape to locali- 
ties offering superior inducements. Prof. Fawcett, writ- 
ing from Salisbury in 1873 or '4, says of the agricultural 
laborers of that section : " They are so poor that it is ab- 
solutely impossible for many of them to pay the expense 
of removing even to a neighboring county." ' I have al- 
ready cited the testimony of Mr. Muggeridge'' respecting 
the removal of large numbers from the south and west of 
England at the public expense, by which persons who had 
actually been supported as j^aupers M'ere immediately 
brought to a condition of comfortable self-support. In 
some rare instances this removal of laborers has been ef- 
fected by the enterprise of private employers. Thus, at 
the meeting of the Social Science Association in 1874, Mr. 
C. M. Palmer, of Newcastle, one of the largest employers 



' Correspondence of the Daily News. 
« P. 185. 



FRUGALITY AFFECTS WAGES. 347 

in England, stated that some years previouslj, wlien there 
was great distress in Cornwall, he had sent an agent to 
collect laborers, paying him so much for eacli man re- 
cruited, offering minimum wages until the men should 
become instructed in mining, one half the cost of trans- 
portation to bo ultimately deducted from their wages. 
Mr. Palmer deemed that the enterprise had been very 
prosperous both in his own interest and in that of the la- 
borers. The philanthropic endeavors of Canon Girdle- 
stone in securing the removal of laborers from the crowd- 
ed districts have also been alluded to. But whether such 
schemes are undertaken by government, by business en- 
terprise, or by private charity, they are almost sure to be 
successful, if at all, in some lower degree than where the 
laborer is furnished with means of his own earning and sav- 
ing, and undertakes his own removal. In strong contrast 
with the helpless condition of the agricultural laborers of 
the south and west, Prof. Kogers notes the independence 
of the laborers of Cumberland and Westmoreland, of 
whom it is reported that they " never allow themselves to 
be destitute of such a sum of money as will enable them 
to emigrate in case the ordinary rate of wages shows signs 
of yielding to the pressure for employment." ' 

On men thus provided, the casualties of production will 
work small permanent injury. Their reserves enable 
them to tide over any commercial disaster, and the return 
of prosperity finds their efficiency unimpaired. If, on the 



1 Pol. Econ., pp. 101, 102. The savings-banks statistics bear out this 
assertion respecting tlie laboring classes of these comities. By the 
report of the Penrith Branch of the Carlisle Savings-Bank, it appears 
that the total amount due to 260 male farm servants was £9259 
9s. 5d.; to 240 female farm-servants, £7904. 8.s. Qd. Instances are given 
of £200, £300, or even £500 having been accumulated by a single per- 
son. (Second Report (1869) of the Commission of 1867 on the Employ- 
ment of Children in Agriculture, p. 141.) 

Sir Frederick Eden in his " History of the Poor" has preserved some 
remarkable instances of considerable accumulations out of earnings. (I. 
495. 496, note.) 



348 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

other hand, the steady decline of industry in their section, 
nnder any general or special cause, imposes on them the 
necessity of migration, they can go at the hest time and in 
the best way. Thus we see that frugality on the part of 
the working classes goes far to supply that condition on 
which competition will secure to them absolutely the high- 
est wages which the existing conditions of industry allow. 
" Wages," says Mr. Mill, " are likely to be high where none 
are compelled by necessity to sell their labor." ' 

But while frugality is thus a condition of great impor- 
tance in securing a beneficent distribution of the product 
of industry, we are compelled to acknowledge that the 
condition of the wage-laborer is not conducive to the devel- 
opment of this quality. We saw ^ that he must, human 
nature being what it is, be somewhat less industrious than 
the person who works on his own account ; he is also likely 
to be less fi-ugul. Take the case of the " peasant proprie- 
tor" of land. Is there an hour of the day left, there is 
always something to be done ; the land is ever crying out 
for labor. Has he a few shillings t » spare at the end of 
the month, there is always something connected with the 
land which demands its investment. AV^hether it be work 
on the growing crop, or the ditching, fencing, and clear- 
ing of land, the increase of live stock and implements, or 
additions to sta])les and barns, the small farmer has always 
a good use to which to put every hour of labor and every 
shilling of money which he can command. After all, it is 
as Sismondi said : " The true savings-bank is the land." 

With the wage-laborer the case is different. He can 
not reapply any portion of the product of his labor di- 
rectly to the subject-matter of his labor, for that is not 
his. If he would put any portion of his wages to a re> 
productive use, he must seek out some borrower, and 
the amount he has to lend being small, this borrower must 



» Pol. Econ., i. 442. 
2 P. 74-7. 



INTEMPERANCE AND WAGES. 349 

be the bank, wliicli will lend the money out, he knows 
not when, he knows not where. This is a very cold- 
blooded affair compared with the application of earnings 
to the land by the proprietor thereof, who works over 
it and lives upon it, who feels that it is all his, and shall 
be his children's after him. ^Neither the imagination nor 
the affections are addressed very powerfully by the sav- 
ings-bank. There is, besides, some delay involved in a 
deposit, which, however slight, defeats many a good reso- 
lution and brings many a half-consecrated sixpence to the 
grocery or the bar-room. 

I have named in the last word the great foe to frugality 
in the working classes. Wholly aside from the perversion 
of instincts, the loss of laboring power, and the actual vice 
and crime resulting from drunkenness, the waste of wealth 
shown by the statistics of the consumption of wine, beer, 
and liquors by the working-classes is appalling. 

I had occasion in the preceding chapter to refer to the 
payment of beer and cider as a part of agricultural wages 
in England. The amount of money actually received and 
spent for these and stronger drinks is estimated, on respect- 
able authority, as follows -: 1869, £113,464,874 ; 1871, £118, 
906,066 ; 1873, £140,014,712. The author of this compu- 
tation proceeds to estimate the cost of the bread consumed 
annually by the people of England at £2 12s. Qd. per head ; 
the cost of tea, coffee, sugar, rice, and cocoa consumed, at 
£1. 10s. 9d. per head : making altogether an average expend- 
iture for these articles of £4. 7-9. Sd., against an expenditure 
of £4. 7s. 2d. for alcoholic drinks, on the basis of 1873. At 
this rate, six years' expenditure would amount to enough to 
pay the national debt, or to build a house worth £150 for 
every family in the kingdom. There may be some exag- 
geration in these estimates ; audit is to be considered that 
the expenditure of the higher classes on this account is 
more than proportional ; yet one can not set the cost of 

' The Temperance Reformation and the Christian Church, pp. 113, 113, 



350 THE WAGES QUE8TI0IX 

wines, ales, and liquors consumed by tlie wage-laboring 
classes of Great Britain lower than £100,000,000 per 
annum. Mr. G. R. Porter, in a paper read before the 
Statistical Society, adopted the estimate that one-half the 
income of workingmen earning between ten and iifteen 
sliillings a week was spent by them on objects in which 
other members of the family had no share ; while the 
proportion thus seltishly devoted by higher paid and pre- 
sumedly more temperate artisans earning from twenty to 
thirty shillings, not infrequently reached one third.' 

Yet, in spite of strong and urgent tendencies to dissipa- 
tion and extravagance among the manual-labor classes, the 
statistics of the savings-banks show a steady growth of the 
principle of frugality, the total deposits in 1873 reaching 
$312,000,000. The deposits in savings-banks throughout all 
Europe,^ exclusive of Russia ' and Turkey, are estimated, 
in a report of M. Normandie to the French National As- 
sembly in 1875, at a total of $1,180,000,000. 

* Statistical Journal, xiii. 364. 

Mr. Baines states that nineteen-twentieths of the occupants of cottages 
in Leeds pay their rent weekly, and could not be trusted lonjjer. (Statis- 
tical Journal, xxii. 136, 138.) The plan of Monday-morning payments has 
been widely urged as a simple, practical measure in aid of the laborer's 
instincts of frugality. French laborers find less difficulty in carrying 
their earnings past the cabaret. 

Mr. Brassey relates that during the construction of the Paris and 
Rouen Railway, the Frenchmen employed were, at their own request, 
paid only once a month. (Work and Wages, p. 17.) 

Mr. McCulloch in his Commercial Dictionary (p. 478) argues strenu- 
ously that the State should refuse to protect small debts, with a view 
to promote frugality on the part of the working-classes. 

'' The fullest body of information relating to banks of saving is to 
be found in a recent report by Prof. Louis Bodio, the accomplished 
chief of the Italian Bureau of Statistics. "Casse di Risparmio in 
Italia, ed all' estero." 

^ Russia, however, has her system of savings-banks, numbering six- 
ty-two, with deposits to the amount of four and a half million roubles, 
in the name of seventy thousand depositors. In contrast with these 
facts, we find in little Switzerland not less than 353,855 depositors, or 
one in every seven of the population. In Denmark the proportion i^ 
one to eight and a half. 



THE SAVINGS OF TEE WAGES CLASS 351 

Oil the Continent of Europe the amount of deposits in 
savings-banks represents but a fraction of the accumula- 
tions of the working classes. The passion of the common 
people for acquiring land leads to the continuous applica- 
tion of circulating capital to the purchase of this species of 
property,' while the various classes of credit institutions 
facilitate the erection of workingmen's houses. If it be 
asked how the acquisition of real property by the work- 
ing classes consists with the mobility of labor which is so 
much to be desired, 1 answer, one need have no fear that 
the true mobility of labor will be impaired at all by any 
form which the savings of the working classes may take; 
that the virtues which are required for the exercise of 
frugality, and whicli the exercise of frugality strengthens, 
afford the best security for all needed movement of labor 
at the right time and in the right way ; and finally, that 
the individual acquisition of real property is never likely 
to become so general as not to leave a considerable portion 
of the members of every trade without ties to the soil. 

It is quite another question how the extensive acquisi- 
tion of public property by the Swiss communes "^ affects the 
desired mobility of labor in that country. It would 
certainly appear at this distance to be inexpedient, as re- 
quiring an undue sacrifice on the part of individuals whom 
the conditions of industry seem to invite to other locali- 
ties. 

The statistics of savings-banks in the United States are 
not to be used with much confidence, for the reason that 
onerous taxation has in several States driven large 
amounts of personal property, belonging to persons of 
means, under the protection of these institutions, which 

* In tlie Canton of Berne, of 500,000 inhabitants, the real property- 
holders numbered, in 1863, 88,670. (Report of Mr. Gould on the Condi- 
tion of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 670.) 

'^ " The estimated value of the property held by the Swiss communes 
between the years 1868 and 1864, independently of the Cantons, may 
be put down at the large sum of 586,853,077 francs." {Ibid.) 



853 THE WAGES Q[/ESTIOJ!f. 

enjoy a partial iuiinuuity from cuutribution. It is not \\n 
usual to deposit, up to the limit of the amount authorized 
by law, in each of a number of banks, and still further to 
multiply such deposits by entering equal amounts in the 
names of wife and children.' 

Notwithstanding this, however, it is evident that a vast 
body of wealth is held by the laboring classes of the 
United States in movable form, in addition to the sums 
invested in houses and lands. In 1ST3 the savings-banks of 
Maine showed 91,398 separate accounts, M'ith an aggregate 
deposit of $29,550,52 J: ; Rhode Island, 93,124 accounts, 
84(>,()17,183; Massachusetts, (;G('),229 accounts, $202, 195,- 
34-1: ; New-York, 83J),472 accounts, $285,520,085. 

II. Individual and mutual intelligence among the work- 
ing classes. The phrase mobility of labor is very useful 
in discussions of the questions of wages, as expressing 
better than any other the one condition upon which 
laborers can receive the highest remuneration which the 
state of productive industry (their own present efficiency 
being taken into account) will allow, and the sole security 
which society can have that the inevitable immediate 
effects of industrial pressure or disaster shall not become 
pennanent. Yet there is danger that the conception of 
what is involved in this term will be inadequate. Assum- 
ing the desire of industrial well-being to be universal, the 
mobility of labor should sup])ly on the i>art of the wages 
class all that is needed for a })erfect competition ; and this 
clearly rct^uires something more than legalized freedom of 
movement, something more, even, than the possession of 
the physical means of transportation and subsistence need- 
ed for migration. The laborer nuist be in a position to 
discern where his real interest lies, for to move in any 
other than the right direction may be more injurious than 



' One case lias come to niv knowledge where a depositor, after ex- 
hausting the list of his human family, entered the maximum amount 
in the name of his doe-. 



INTELLIGENCE AFFECTS WAGES. 853 

to abide in liis lot, since all movement implies loss of 
force, and is only to be justified by the prospect of a 
distinct gain in the result. 

This ability to discern where one's interest lies require-; 
two tilings, the acquisition of just information and the 
rejection of false information. Of the former it is not 
necessary to speak. It is seen in the mere mention, how 
large is the requirement it makes of the working classes ; 
how slight the probability that this requii'ement will be 
completely filled. The second requirement is, among an 
ignorant populatifjn, even more difficult. So prone to dis- 
couragement are men, especially men lacking in mental 
training and culture; so efficient is Rumor in her evil 
office of spreading the news of failure and disaster, that 
the effects of acting upon false information in a single 
instance may, with ignorant persons, neutralize the most 
substantial inducements of self-interest in many other in- 
stances. Such persons have little to hold on to, or steady 
their minds upon ; they generalize hastily and passionate- 
ly, or, rather, they do not in any true sense generalize at 
all ; and after the first shock to their confidence they be- 
come absurdly suspicious. 

Even in enterprises of less pith and moment, the cloud 
of prejudice, vague appreliensions, and false conceits, 
originating in ignorance, obscures the view, in every direc- 
tion, of the laborer's true interest. 

" Few," says Mr. Chadwick,' " who have not had ex- 
perience in the administration of relief to the destitute in 
periods of wide distress, can be fully sensible of the dif- 
ference, in amount of trouble and chargeability to the 
ratepayers, between educated and intelligent and uneducat- 
ed and unintelligent people of the wage-class — the heavy 
lumpishness of the uneducated, their abject prostration, 
their liability to misconception and to wild passion, their 
frequent moroseness and intractability, and the difficulty 

' Statistical Journal, xxviii. 11, 12. 



354 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

of teaching tliem, as compared with the self-help of the 
better educated, who can write and inquire for themselves, 
and find out for themselves new outlets and sources of 
productive employment, and who can read for themselves 
and act on written or printed instructions. The really 
well-trained, educated, and intelligent are the l)est to bear 
distress ; they are the last to come upon charitable relief- 
lists, and the first to leave them." 

III. Sexual self-restraint. I am not speaking here in the 
Malthusian sense with reference to the general supply of 
labor. In Malthusianism the average number of children to 
the family is the single consideration ; it matters not whether 
each family have fonr children, or one family none, and the 
next eight : the supply of labor is equally affected. Again, 
while in Malthusianism the age at which marriage shall be 
contracted and children produced is not a matter of in- 
difference, it is only of consequence as it affects the period 
within which population shall double. I here adduce the 
desirableness of sexual self-restraint on an account which 
is wholly additional to this — namely, the influence it must 
exert upon the mobility of the laborer. We have seen 
the occasion in modern society for a frequent, one might 
almost say an incessant, readjustment of population and 
industry. It is clear, that though the laborer can never 
wholly escape from this necessity, it is of peculiar im- 
portance that he should be as disembarrassed as possible 
during the years when he is coming to find out his own 
powers and capabilities, learning how to work, and getting 
into industrial relations, presumably for life. It is certain 
that he can make a favorable disposition of his labor then, 
if ever ; that he will never be able afterwards to seek hig 
market with so little of effort and so little of loss. 

It is, therefore, economically desirable, without respect 
to the effect his earlier marriage might have on the 
general supply of labor, that at this critical period hig 
mobility should be at the maximum. Of course, this 
proposition does not apply generally to communities in 



EARLY MARBIAGE8 AFFECT WAGES. 355 

the condition of the American colonies and the early 
United States, where labor was almost painfully deficient, 
and where land was abundant. A young man there could 
scarcely have placed himself wrong; and any disadvan- 
tage the impediments of a youthful marriage might have 
occasioned him was amply compensated by the access of 
productive power which his rising family soon brought 
liim, in a country where the condition of " diminishing 
returns" had not been reached. Bnt when settlements 
became dense and production diversified, the necessity of 
a precise adaptation of labor to industry, and a consequent 
readjustment of population, becomes urgent, and that 
urgency increases with increase of numbers and diversi- 
fication of products. Hence it is that early and improv- 
ident marriages, such as characterize the Irish' at home 
and in foreign lands, influence unfavorably the rate of 
wages, wholly besides their effect on the general supply 
of labor. The young laborer is no longer free to abandon 
the avocation his adaptation to which he finds he has 
wrongly estimated, or the locality where he finds himself 
crowded by equally needy competitors, and to seek the 
price of his labor in a better market ; but, tied down by 
the cares of family, and harassed by immediate necessi- 
ties, he sinks hopelessly into what he knows to be the 
wrong place for him. 

But if we turn our attention from the fortunes of 
the individual to those of the whole wages class, we 
shall see an additional reason, in the interest of a be- 
neficent distribution of the products of industry, for the 
procrastination of marriage. Tlie desideratum is, we 
have seen, to secure the readjustment of population to 
industry. It is clearly true that the longer marriage 
is postponed, the larger the proportion of the total labor- 

^ Sir Archibald Alison, writing of the Irish peasants in the days be- 
fore the Famine, speaks of them as "almost always " marrying at 
eighteen, and not infrequently becoming grandfathers at thir*^^y-four. 
(Hist, of Europe, xviii. 5.) 



356 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

ing population which will he free, so far as domestic 
incumbrances are concerned, to respond to economical 
impulses suggesting a change of avocation or of residence. 
It is not merely that, if they go in obedience to such sug- 
gestions, they secure then* own highest remuneration, but 
they also relieve the market in those localities or occu- 
])ations which they forsake. With the disposable element 
thus increased by the procrastination of marriage, the 
heads of families, those who, in the words of Bacon, 
" have given hostages to fortune," may to a very large ex- 
tent, except only in extraordinary emergencies, be exempt 
from this necessity. 

The averasjce ao^c at which marriag-es are contracted 
varies greatly with the industrial necessities and the social 
habits of different communities.' In Belgium, in 21.17 
out of 100 marriages the groom is under 25 years ; in Hol- 
land, 21.42; in Sweden, 21.83; in Norway, 23.95; in 
Austria, 28.40 ; in France, 29.06 ; in Scotland, 41;32 ; in 
England, 50.95. 

lY. Legal regulations clearly correspondent to infirmi- 
ties in the mass of laborers, which tend to defeat the real 
freedom of choice and power of movement. 

After making all allowances for the proneness of legis- 
latures to meddle and blunder, and for defects in ad- 
ministration of the law, it still remains true that the 
wages class may, in exceptional instances, be helped for- 



' Marriages take place at a very early age in India. Mr. Beverley, the 
Census Commissioner, calls attention to the fact that the religious be- 
liefs of the people contribute to this result, as it is deemed highly im- 
portant that the burial rites, on which the welfare of the soul after 
death, according to their faith, greatly depends, should be performed 
by male offspring. (Economist, May 9th, 1874, p. 555.) In Ireland early 
marriages have undoubtedly been promoted by the influence of the 
priesthood. (J. S. Mill's Pol. Econ. i. 345. 446 ; Alison's Hist, of Europe, 
xviii. 10; Statistical Journal, xxii. 217, xxiii. 205 ; Prof. Senior, quoted 
in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1868, p. 328, cf. p. 336.) In Eng- 
land Mr. J. S. Mill charges that the policy of the Tory party has been 
to encourage early marriages. (Pol. Econ., i. 426.) 



LAWS PROTECTING LABOR. 357 

ward ill an important degree towards a real and vital com- 
petition, bj the exercise of the prohibitory power of the 
State. During the present century, says the Duke of 
Argyle, in his E,3ign of Law, ' " two great discoveries 
have been made in the science of government : the one 
is the immense advantage of abolishing restrictions npon 
Trade; the other is the absolute necessity of imposing 
restrictions upon Labor." There is here no inconsist- 
ency. I have shown in a preceding chapter that those 
economists who refuse to carry into the department of 
Distribution the rule of perfect freedom from restraint 
which they accept in the department of Exchange, do not 
abandon an economical principle, but only leave behind 
a practical rule, the conditions of which no longer exist. 
The possible justification of Factory Acts and kindred 
legislation may be thus briefly stated. For perfect competi- 
tion in wage-labor it is required that the employer and the 
laborer shall each understand and pursue his own true 
permanent interest. Bat this requirement is never com- 
pletely fulfilled. The employer, on his part, is always, in 
a higher or lower degree, unduly under the domination of 
immediate purposes. The haste to be rich, which often 
makes waste ; greed, which is always unwise ; parsimony, 
which disables from business success many a man who has 
every other qualification, rendering him incapable of ever 
takinof a lar^e and liberal view of his industrial relations ; 
rivalry, mutual jealousy among manufacturers affecting 
the temper of business and warping production from its 
best course — these passions and infirmities among employ- 
ers, quickened at times by stringent financial necessities, 
must more or less make separation between their seeming 
present and their true permanent interest. Thus it be- 
comes possible that the employer shall seek to crowd down 
wages, extend the hours of work, quicken the movement 
of machinery, admit children of tender age to painful and 

' Pp. 334, 335. 



358 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

protracted labor, ^ scrimp in. the conveniences of produc- 
tion, and neglect the ventilation and sanitary care of his 
shop or factory, all in the effort to increase the month's 
and the year's profits, though such a course is, in the long 
view, prejudicial alike to himself and his hands. Perfect 
competition would make the emj^loyer the guardian of the 
laborer's interests. "What sort of a guardian imperfect 
competition makes of the employer unrestrained by law 
or an active jj^^blic sentiment, may be read in the official re- 
ports of Great Britain, in which the condition of her 
mines and mills and factories prior to their legal regulation 
is described. 

But the failure of true competition is, as has already 
been abundantly shown, far greater on the side of the 
wages class, though in this respect very wide differences 
exist, due both to the industrial quality of the individual 
laborer and to the nature of the occupation pursued. The 
skilled workman, receiving high wages, with an ample 
margin of subsistence, is always fairly able to seek his best 
market. Doubtless he fails in a considerable degree, at 
times, for want of apprehension, or of the spirit of enter- 
prise ; but, in the main, he satisfies the condition of a 
riffht distribution. Even the unskilled and unintelligent la- 
borer, in occupations involving no extensive subdivision of 
work or expensive machinery and materials, may find his 
place tardily and painfully, and make his terms, though at 
some loss. It is Avhen laborers of both sexes and all ages, 
each doing some special operation — a small part of a great 
^vork — are aggregated in mills and factories where costly 
materials are consumed and complicated machinery is em- 
ployed, that the control of the individual over his lot is 
diminished to the minimum. What is the single laborer in 

* " Quand I'enfant n'est pas extenue par un travail premature, et 
quand on attend qu'il ait les forces necessaires avant de 1' astreindre au 
travail, une fois parvenu a I'age d'homme, il est meilleur ouvrier, tra- 
vaillemieus, plus vite et produit davantage." — M. Wolowski: — Legis- 
lation sur le Travail des Enfants. (MM. Tallon and Maurice, p. 333.) 



EN0LI8E FACTOBT ACTS. 359 

a cotton-mill ? What does liis will or wisli stand for ? The 
mill itself becomes one vast machine which rolls on in its 
appointed work, tearing, crnshing, or grinding its hnman, 
just as relentlessly as it does its other, material. The 
force of discipline completely subjects the interests and 
the objects of the individual to the necessities of a great 
establishment. Whoever fails to keep up, or faints by 
the way, is relentlessly thrown out. If the wheel runs for 
twelve hours in the day, every operative must be in his 
place from the first to the last revolution. If it runs for 
thirteen hours or fourteen, he must still be at his post. Per- 
sonality disappears ; even the instinct of self-assertion is 
lost ; apathy soon succeeds to ambition and hopefulness. 
The laborer can quarrel no more with the foul air of his 
unventilated factory, burdened with poisons, than he can 
quarrel with the great wheel that turns below. 

This helplessness, this subjection to an order which the 
workman has not established, and can not in one particular 
change, becomes more complete in the case of women and 
children, while the responsibility of the State therefor 
becomes more direct and urgent. 

It is on such considerations as these, that the economist 
may, acting under the fullest accountability to strictly 
economical principles, advocate what Mr. l^ewmarch calls* 
" a sound system of interference with the hours of labor." 

The Factory legislation of England, the necessity and 
economical justification of which tlie Duke of Argyle 
has called one of the great discoveries of the century in 
the science of government, began in 1802 with the act of 
42d George III., limiting tlie hours of labor in woolen 
and cotton mills and factories to twelve, exclusive of 
meal-times, imposing many sanitary regulations upon the 
working and sleeping rooms of operatives, requiring the 
instruction of children in letters for the first four years of 
their apprenticeship, and providing an official inspection 

* Statistical Journal, xxiv. 463. 



3G0 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

of establishments for the due execution of the Liw. 
Additional legislation was had in 1816 and 1831 ; and in 
1833 was passed the important act known as 3d and Ith 
William IV. (c. 103), which forbade niglit-work in the 
ease of all persons under eighteen years of age, and limit- 
ed the labor of such persons to twelve hours, inclusive of 
an hour and a half for meals ; prohibited the employ- 
ment (except in silk-mills) of children under nine years 
of age, while between tlie ages of nine and thirteen the 
hours were reduced to eight a day (in silk-mills, ten) ; 
prescribed a certain nunibor of half-holidays in the year, 
and required medical certificates of health on the admis- 
sion of chiklren to factory labor. The scope of these 
provisions has been extended, successively, by legislation 
in 1814, 1817, 1850, 1853, 1861, 1861, and 1867, until 
they now embrace all persons engaged in processes inci- 
dental to the manufacture of textile fabrics, with but slight 
exception, and also to the manufacture of earthenware, 
lucifer-matches, percussion-caps and cartridges, or in the 
employments of paper-staining and fustian-cutting. 

The principle of the English Factory Acts has been slow- 
ly extended over a considerable portion of Europe. Before 
1839 England, Prussia, and Austria had, in greater or less 
degree, controlled the labor of children,' though to but 
little effect in the last-named country, where the day of 
labor was still cruelly long, frequently reaching to fifteen 
hours, exclusive of meals, and sometimes to seventeen.'* 

French factory legislation dates from 1841. By the 
act of that year (March 22d) children were not to be ad- 
mitted to factories under eight years of age. They were 
only to work eight hours in the twenty-four up to twelve 
years, and twelve hours from twelve years to sixteen. 
They were not to work at night, with a few exceptions in 
the case of children above thirteen, or to work at all on 

' L. Horner, Employment of Children, p. 45, cf. p. 54. 
' lUd, p. 105. 



EUROPEAN FACTORY ACTS. 361 

Sundays or holidays. School attendance was required 
up to twelve years. The number of children in 18Y0 
working subject to this act was about 100,000, nine-tenths 
of these being employed in spinning and weaving facto- 
ries/ May 19th, ISTtt, a new law of much greater range 
and higher efficiency was passed by the National Assem- 
bly. By this act children under ten years of age can not 
be admitted to work in factories, mines, or shops ; from 
ten to twelve years they can work only in certain indus- 
tries to be specially designated by a government commis- 
sion, and they only work for six hours in the day ; from 
twelve years onwards they are not to work in excess of 
twelve hours a day. Until sixteen years of age they are 
not to work at night. No cliild can be admitted to 
work in mines under twelve years, and no female at 
any age. Universal primary instruction is provided by 
the law, and a rigid inspection of all establishments in 
which children are employed.^ 

In Belgium there has been no legislation protective of 
children since the decree of 1813, which prohibited their 
employment under ten years of age in mines. 

In Germany, by the Industrial Code of April 6th, 1869 
(p. 127-132), the age of admission to labor is fixed at 
twelve years ; from twelve to fourteen, children can be em- 
ployed but six hours a day ; from fourteen to sixteen, but 
ten hours, with two intervals of rest, Night-labor is pro- 
liibited. School-attendance and factory-inspection are rig- 
idly enforced. 

In Switzerland the age of admission varies according 
to the character of the industry pursued ; in some twelve 
years, in others thirteen, in others fourteen," 

' Report of Mr. Malet on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of 
France. 

2 For the text of this law see the work published by MM. Tallon 
and Maurice in 1875, Legislation sur le Travail des Enfants, pp. 

- See the work of MM. Tallon and Maurice, p. 34. 



363 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

In Italy there are no laws relating to the employment 
of children in factories, but children under ten years are 
not permitted to work in mines.' 

In Sweden, by royal statute of June 18th, 1864, 
children under twelve years are not allowed to work in 
factories, nor any person under eighteen years to be em- 
ployed at night.^ 

In Spain and Portugal no laws exist respecting the age 
at which, or the number of hours in the day for which, 
children shall be employed. 

In Russia and in Holhind there were, according to the 
British Consular Reports of 1873 relative to Textile Fac- 
tories, no laws reguUiting or restricting the labor of chil- 
dren.' Mr. Walsham reported that in the Netherlands 
children were employed so young that they could earn but 
a shilling a w^eek. Mr. Egerton reported that in Russia 
thirteen hours a day was the general average of the fac- 
tories, the children working as long as the men. 

V. Sympathy and respect for labor in the community. 

It is at this point that we traverse most completely the 
orthodox political economy. There has been no end of 
contemptuous ridicule, or grave rebuke from the profes- 
sors of the science, and from reviews and journals es- 
pecially affecting that character, towards those who have 
assumed that a friendly public opinion could effect any 
substantial improvement in the condition of the work- 
ing classes. "It is not uniisnal," says Mr. McLeod, "to 
hear persons of benevolence who see the shocking miseiy 
which even now prevails among so many in this country, 
exclaim that employers ought to pay higher wages. 
But all such ideas are visionary.''* 

Especially has the agitation respecting the wages of 
women been deprecated as useless or mischievous. We 

^ Eeport of Mr. Hemes, 1871, p. 284. 

- Eeport of Mr. Gosling ou Textile Fiictories, 1873, p. 116. 

■•' P. 66 (Mr. Walsbam) ; p. Ill (Mr. Egerton). 

^ Pol. Econ., pp. 211, 212. 



PUBLIC OPINION AFFECTS WAQE8. 363 

are told that " the inexorable laws of supply and de- 
mand" determine the rate of wages; that benevolence 
has no more to do here than with the operations of the 
steam-engine ; that competition is the one irresistible, 
unrelenting force which overbears all considerations of 
compassion or charity, and works out a predetermined re- 
sult with unerring certainty. Who is not familiar with 
these phrases ? 

The man would be weak or ignorant who should ex- 
pect that any but the most exceptional and eccentric of 
mortals would at any given time pay more than the 
market rate of wages, or should look upon such possible 
exhibitions of disinterested philanthropy as likely to set 
a fashion to be followed by the shrewd, eager, and but lit- 
tle unselfish men who make up the mass of employers. 
But the question is, whether the force we here invoke 
may not help to fix that very market rate of wages. It is 
not asserted that this sympathy and respect entertained for 
labor by the general community need ever be distinctly 
present in the consciousness, as a motive to individual or 
class for advancing wages. But I base the proposition 
that these do constitute one condition of a right distribu- 
tion of the products of industry, upon accepted principles 
of moral philosophy, supported by inferences, which ap- 
pear to me conclusive, from economic statistics of wide 
range and undoubted authority in a kindred department 
of industrial contract. 

First, of the reason of the case. Let us recall the prin- 
ciple so frequently insisted on, that it is only as competi- 
tion is perfect that the wages class have any security that 
they will receive the highest remuneration which the ex- 
isting conditions of industry will permit ; that in the 
failure of competition they may be pushed down grade 
after grade in the industrial as in the social scale, there 
being almost no limit to the possible degradation of the 
working classes where a free circulation of labor is 
clenied. Let us recall, moreover, that the failure of com- 



364 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

petition may be due to moral as much as to physical 
causes ; that if the workman from any cause does not pur- 
sue his interest, he loses his interest, whether he refrain 
from bodily fear, from poverty, from ignorance, from 
timidity and dread of censure, or from the effects of bad 
political economy which assures him that if he does not 
seek his interest, his interest will seek him. Let us bear in 
mind, moreover, that it matters nothing whether compe- 
tition fails in his case because he does not begin to seek a 
l)etter market, or, having begun, gives up in discourage- 
ment. 

Now, I ask, can it be doubtful that the respect and 
sympathy of the community must strengthen the wages 
class in this unceasing struggle for economical advan- 
tages ; must give weight and force to all their reasonable 
demands; must make them more resolute and patient in 
resisting encroachment ; must add to the confidence with 
which each individual laborer will rely on the good faitli 
of those who are joined with him in his cause, and make 
it harder for any weak or doubtful comrade to succumb 
in the contest? 

And, on the other hand, will not the consciousness that 
the whole community sympathize with the efforts of 
labor to advance its condition by all fair means, inevit- 
ably weaken the resistance of the employing class to 
claims which can be conceded, diminish the confidence 
with which each employer looks to his fellows to hold out 
to the end, and make it easier for the less resolute to re- 
tii'e from the contest and grant, amid general applause, 
what has been demanded ? He must be more than hu- 
man or less than human who is uninfluenced by the 
friendly or the cold regards of men. 

And if such a disposition of the public mind must con- 
firm the union and exalt the courage and sustain the faith 
of the party that hears everywhere approving words, 
meets everywhere looks of sympathy, and must tend to 
impair somewhat, at least, the mutual trust and common 



POPULAR SYMPATHY WITH LABOR. 365 

resolution of their opponents, wlio shall say that wages 
may not be affected thereby 1 

Let ns apply these principles to an individual case. 
Hodge thinks — Hodge is a ploughman, and has been get- 
ting twelve shillings a week — that he ought to have more 
wages ; or, rather — for Hodge would scarcely put it so 
abruptly — he feels that it is dreadfully hard to live on 
twelve shilHngs. He has attended a lecture delivered by 
Mr, Joseph Arch, from a wagon on the green. He is 
uneasy, and wants to improve his condition. So far, 
then, he is a hopeful subject economically. The desire 
to improve one's condition is tlie sine qua non of compe- 
tition. Will these stirrings of industrial ambition come 
to any thing ? Will this little leaven of unrest leaven the 
whole of the very lumpish lump christened Hodge ? 
Will the discontented ploughman seek and find his bet- 
ter market ? This is a great question, for upon the an- 
swer to it depends the future of Hodge, and perhaps of his 
sons and grandsons. Let the Spectator' tell how he is 
assisted on his way and encouraged in his weak, ignorant, 
doubting mind by landlord, bishop, and judge. 

" The man has been, so to speak, morally whipped for 
six months. He has found no friend anywhere, except in 
a press he can neither read nor understand. The duke 
has deprived him of his allotment; the bishop has rec- 
ommended that his instructor should be ducked ; the 
squire has threatened him with dismissal in winter ; 
the magistrate has fined him for quitting work, which is 
just, and scolded him for listening to lectures, which is 
tyranny ; the mayor at Evesham has prohibited him from 
meeting on the green ; and the lawyer — witness a re- 
cent case near Chelmsford — has told him that any one 
who advises and helps him to emigrate is a hopeless 
rascal." 

N^ow, I ask, is Hodge quite as likely to pursue his in- 

^ August <tli, 1873. 



366 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

terest and persist in wliatever that I'equires, as if his 
social superiors and the men who should be his instructors 
and helpers were encouraging him to better his fortune 
if he finds a chance, instead of telling him that if he de- 
mands more wages, he is kicking against the wage-fund, 
and that if he kicks against the wage-fund, he is defying 
an ordinance of heaven ; or as if the law were adminis- 
tered occasionally by men indifferent' in the dispute 
between himself and his employer ; as if the shop-keeper 
and the publican and the lawyer and the rector were not 
all ranged against him ? Is it not possible that, for the 
lack of a little fanning, the feeble flame in Hodge's breast 
may die out, and he, giving up all thoughts of seeking 
his fortune elsewhere, return to his furrow, never to st]-ay 
from it again ? And so vale, Hodge ! 

Political economy, says Mr. Mill, is concerned with man 
" solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who 
is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of 
means for obtaining that end. . . . It makes entire abstrac- 
tion of every other human passion or motive except those 
which may be regarded as perpetually antagonizing prin- 
ciples to the desire of wealth — namely, aversion to labor 
and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences," 

Among beings thus constituted, doubtless competition 
would prove " inexorable," But, surely, economists should 
be careful how they apply to mankind as they are, conclu- 
sions which they have deduced from the study of such a 
monstrous race, made up entire of laziness and greed, in- 
capable of love or hate or shame. 

Abstract every other human passion and motive ! elimi- 
nate respect and sympathy! Why, who can say how 
largely this very love of wealth is due to the unwilling- 
ness to be thought meanly of by our fellow-men, or the 
more positive desire to excite their envy or admiration l 

'As I understand it, no man in England can be a justice of the 
peace unless lie have an estate of £100 a year in land. 



PUBLIC OPimOIT INFLUEKCES RENTS. 867 

And if regard for the opinions of others may be a suffi- 
cient reason, as we know it is, for men to exert themselves 
laboriously and painfully, why may it not be a reason for 
men to forbear ' to press their power and their undoubted 
rights to the point of cruelty ? 

As tills subject is of prime importance, I beg m' 
reader's indulgence in making an excursion into another 
department of political economy — namely, that of rent — to 
see if we may not find there evidence of the influence of 
this very cause which we have invoked in aid of labor. 
If competition is "inexorable;" if the laws of supply 
and demand are " immutable ;" if the desire of gain is an 
all-controlling passion, these things ought to be found so 
in the department of rent as truly as in the department of 
wages. As we must make a selection, let us take three 
countries whose land systems have been carefully studied ; 
countries in which peasant proprietorship is found in an 
exceptionally small degree, and where, consequently, the 
question of rent becomes of the highest importance to the 
welfare of the people. These are England, Italy, and 
Ireland. 

In England, Prof. Thorold Rogers declares, rents have 
remained at a point much below that to which com- 
petition alone would carry them. The vaunted gene- 
rosity of land-owners is, he says, " really the necessity of 
the situation. Englishmen would not tamely acquiesce 
in a practice which continually revalued their occupancies 
and made their own outlay the basis for an enhanced rent. 
The rent of agricultural land is therefore seldom the 
maximum annual value of the occupancy ; in many cases, 
is considerably below such an amount.'" Again he says : 

^ Mr. Tremenheere, in liis testimony on truck before the Committee 
of 1854 on the Payment of Wages, says : "I believe, from all that I 
have heard in different mining-districts, that, as a rule, the large com- 
panies, and the persons who are amenaile to public opinion among gen- 
tlemen, do not resort to those petty and indirect modes of cheating their 
workmen." (Report, p. 40.) 

^ Cobden and Political Opinion, p. 94. 



3fi=? THE WAGES QUESTION. 

" The tenant is virtually protected by the disreputable 
jyublicity which would be given to a sudden eviction or a 
dishonest appropriation of the tenant's improvements.'' ^ 

In Italy we find local usages respecting land nearly all- 
powerful, though exceptions exist of provinces where 
competition" has entered to enhance rents. " The same 
misfortune," says Sismondi, in writing of Tuscany, 
" would probably have befallen this people ii public opinion 
did not protect the cultivator; but a proprietor would not 
dare to impose conditions unusual in the country ; and 
even in changing one metayer for another, he alters no- 
thing of the terms of the engagement." 

The third country I have taken is probably the only one 
of Western Europe to which we could turn as affording 
an example of rents kept at the point to which unre- 
strained competition would carry them. And if we ask 
why it was that the " laws of supply and demand " proved 
here indeed " inexorable," we find not contradiction but 
corroboration of our principle. It is not necessary to go 
far back in the history of Ireland to show why it was that 
nothing intervened here to ])revent the tenantry fiom be- 
ing ground down by unintermitted competition. It was 
because sympathy and confidence and mutual respect' 

'Pol. Econ., p. 184. 

^ Is it said, You are speaking of a failure of competition as if it 
Avore favorable to a beneficial distribution of property ? I answer, 
Absolute competition, equal on botli sides, is the single condition of a 
perfect distribution. But if tlie laborers are disabled from competition 
by iirnorance, poverty, or otber cause — as the laborers of so many coun- 
tries are, in the mass — then it is merciful that public opinion or the 
force of law enters to prevent them from b 'iug crushed, as tliey would 
be, in their inertia if competition remained in full force on the mas- 
ter's side. Competition to be beneficial must be exerted like the pres- 
sure of the atmosphere — everywhere and uniformly. 

' " The landlord of an Irish estate inhabited by Roman Catholics is 
a sort of despot who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, 
to no law but that of his will. . . . Nothing satisfies him but an 
unlimited submission. Disrespect, or any thing tending toward satici- 
ness, he may punish with his cane or his horse-whip with the most 



BENTS m IRELAND. 86Q 

were unknown between the two classes of tlie population, 
^i was not merely that the land-owners of Ireland and its 
peasantry were of different races, of different religions/ 
and, to no small deii;ree, of different speecli— distinctions 
in themselves of tremendous moment. There was more 
than this and wors3 than this in Ireland. The title of the 
landlord was from conquest and confiscation, and to sus- 
tain an original wrong had required a system of legal 
discrimination and proscription, of which the judicions 
Hallam says : " To have exterminated the Catholics by 
the sword, or expell^id them like the Moriscoes of Spain, 
would have been little more repngnant to justice and hu- 
manity, but incomparably more politic." ^ 

It is thus that Macaulay describes the relations of the 
Saxon and the Celtic inhabitants of Ireland in 1685 : " On 
the same soil dwelt two populations locally intermixed, mor- 
ally and politically sundered. The difference of religion 
was by no means tlie only difference, or even the chief 
difference. They sprang from different stocks ; tliey 
spoke different languages. They had different national 
characters, as strongly opposed as any two national charac- 
ters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of 
civilization. Between two such populations tliere could 
be little sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs 
had generated a strong antipathy. The relation in which 
the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation 
in which the follov^^ers of William the Conqueror stood to 

perfect security. A po r ma,n would have his bones brolien if he 
offered to lift his hands ii his own defence. . . . Tlie execution of 
the laws lies very much in the hands of justices of the peace, many of 
whom are drawn from the m,ost illiberal class in the kingdom." — Ar- 
tliur Young, Tour in Ireland (Pinkerton's Travels, iii. 837, of. ]\ 81G.) 

' Of three great divisions of Ireland — Leinster, Munster, and Con- 
naught — Mr. O'Connor Morris sass: " Probably sev-n eiiihths of the 
land belong to a proprietary of Protestants, and perhaps even a {jreater 
proportion of the occupiers are Roman Catholics." (The Land Ques- 
tion of Ireland, p. 231.) 

'Constitutional F'siory of England, iii. 383. 



370 THE WA0E8 QUESTION. 

tlie Saxon churls, or tlie relation in which the followers 
of Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico.'" 

This truly is a state of things in which we might look 
with confidence to find the law of supply and demand 
" inexorable," and so, in these circumstances, it proved. 
The improvidence and ignorance of the peasantry concur- 
ring, rents were advanced by the acquisitive and aggres- 
sive passion of the land-holding class, unchecked by public 
sentiment or generally by individual kindness, until Lord 
Devon's commission, in 1814, fonnd that in numerous 
cases the nominal rent of land was greater than the money 
value of the annual produce, the tenant being kept there- 
by perpetually in debt to the landlord, whose interest it 
became to allow him, thus involved, to remain upon the 
soil.= 

]^ow, I desire not to disparage the influence of other 
causes in bringing about this result, but I can not think that 
the history of the land in Ireland would have been what 
we know it was, had the landlord and tenant classes con- 
stituted one proper population, with ties of a common 
speech, faith, and blood, having equal rights before the 
law, and with those kindly feelings which, for all that is 
evil in us, are more natural between men and classes of 
men, than distrust and dislike. And even with such a 
miserable relation as existed between the two classes of 
the Irish population, I, for one, do not believe that such a 
miserable result would have been possible, had not so large 
a portion of the land-owners been absentees,' conducting 
their exactions through agents selected and rewarded for 
their success in wringing money from the soil, seeing and 

' History of England, cbap. vi. 

"^ " The Irish peasantry were incomparably worse ofE than tlie French 
peasantry were before the Revolution." — Prof. Rogers, Pol, Econ. 180. 

^ " I am aware that, in the view of political economy as taught by 
writers of the hypothetical school, an absent landlord is identical with 
a landlord present ; just as, by Mr. Mill's definition, Simon Magus 
and Simon Peter, John of Cappadocia and John the Baptist, are exact 
economical equivalents " — Address at Amherst, 1874. 



RESPECT AND SYMPATHY FOR LABOR. 371 

hearing notliing of the wretchedness thej caused, and 
drowning all misgivings in the revelry of foreign capitals. 

Time would fail to trace the course of that improve- 
ment in the condition of the people which, by general 
admission, has taken place in Ii-eland since 1850. Plere, 
again, I desire not to disparage the influence of other causes, 
but I can not doubt that some part of the beneficial result 
observed has been due, first, to the great liberalizing and 
ameliorating movement throughout the kingdom, which 
threw down so many of the old hateful distinctions of faith 
and class ; a movement in which the reform of the crimi- 
nal code, Catholic emancipation, the suffrage act of 1832, 
the repeal of the penal acts against Jews and Dissenters, 
and the abolition of the corn-laws — each was at once effect 
and cause of new effects; a movement which was felt 
latest in Ireland because Ireland had been so widely and 
deeply sundered in interest and feeling ; and, secondly, to 
the remorse and shame and pity which were awakened by 
the disclosures of Lord Devon's connnission, followed 
close by that horrible and sickening demonstration, the 
Famine of 1846-7, Avhich brought home to every man and 
woman in the United Kingdom, in images never to fade 
from view, the wrongs and miseries of Ireland. If the 
peasantry of tlie Green Isle are better off to-day than a 
generation ago, it is due, not alone to the general indus- 
trial advances of the intervening period, or to the migra- 
tion of surplus labor, if, indeed, that labor was ever truly 
in excess, but also, and in no small part, to the hapjDy 
change which has passed over the moral relations of land- 
lord aftd tenant. 

If, then, after so brief a survey we find public opinion 
operating thus powerfully in the department of Rent, are 
Ave not justified in the assertion that it must also be opera- 
tive in some degree in Wages ? 

I do not, be it observed, claim that wages can be en- 
hanced by any but economical causes ; I merely assert that 
respect for labor and symjDathy with the body of laborers. 



372 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

on tlie part of the geiierul C(jminmiity, constitute an eco- 
nomical cause, in just so far as they strengthen the laborer 
in his pursuit of his own interest, thus making competi- 
tion on his part more effective, and in just so far as they 
take something from the severity with which the employer 
insists upon his immediate interest, thus reducing the 
force of competition on that side, making it more nearly 
etjual to that which the laborer, poor, fearful, and ignorant, 
may be able to oppose. 



WOMAN 8 WAGES. 

It is in the partial failure of the condition on which I 
have here dwelt so much at length that we find one impor- 
tant cause of the inadequate wages of women. 

But first as to the fact of wages inadequate to the ser- 
vice performed. Nothing is more common than the asser- 
tion, in print, that women are paid but one half or one 
third as much as men for performing the same work. 
Such assertions are generally based on a misconception of 
the actual constitution of industrial society. Because a 
woman working in a woollen factory receives but twelve 
shillings a w^eek while a man gets twenty-four, it can not 
properly be said that the latter receives twice as ranch for 
doing the same work, since the work done in a factory is 
of many kinds, making very different demands upon the 
operatives in the respects of strength, skill, and intelli- 
gence, and hence justly remunerated at very different 
rates, from threepence a day, it may be, to as many shil- 
lings. And if we inquire, we shall find that women in a 
woollen factory are in fact rarely engaged upon the same 
kind of work as the men. Thus in an account of the orgrani- 
zation of a representative establishment given in the Sta- 
tistical Journal, where the number and sex of the opera- 
tives of each class are stated, and the wages paid to each, 
I note that all the hand-loom weavers are men, all the 
power-loom weavers women. And I also note what i^ 
bignificant, that the wages of the men employed as hand- 



WOMAN'S WACjtES. 37S 

loom %¥eayers are mucli nearer women's wages than tlie 
wages of the men employed in any other department of 
the factory. 

In the same way, in his history of the cotton manu- 
facture, published a generation ago, Mr. Baines stated 
that large departments were then entirely given up to 
women and children. ISTow, clearly, as Mr. Baines re- 
marks, "that which is only a child's labor can be remuner- 
ated only by a child's wages." We have seen that the 
employer can not pay in wages more than he may fairly 
look to get back in the price of his products. Hence the 
fact that a woman may require more to subsist upon than 
a twelve-year-old boy affords no economical reason why 
she should receive more wages if she only does the same 
kind of work. 

But even though Avomen performed the same kind of 
work as men, receiving therefor wages less than men, it 
would not follow, as of course, that their wages were in- 
adecpiate to tlieir service. The differences existing in re- 
spect to the efficiency of labor, both on the side of work 
and on the side of waste, have been seen (Chapter III.) to 
be very great as between laborers actually employed in 
the same operation. Hence it might be true that a man 
and a woman working at the same table, upon the same 
material, with the same implements, or laboring side by 
side in the fields,' should receive wages in ^•ery dif- 
ferent amounts, and yet their respective services be most 
exactly recompensed. 

Now, there are reasons, some of a social and some of a 
physiological nature, for the services of women, as a body, 
being in a degree less desirable to employers than those of 
men. The physiological reasons have been well stated by 
,Dr. Ames in his recent book. Sex in Industry. These 
.are sufficient totally to debar women from many occupa- 

^ It may fairly be assumed, for instance, that the ratio between the 
average value of mule and of female serfs in Russia employed in ao-ri- 
culture before the emancipation — namely, £50 and £17 respectivel* 
(Statistical Journal, xxiii. 379) — fairly represented the relative worth ta 
the owner of the two kinds of labor. 



at4 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

tions, and greatly to reduce their efficiency in others.' 
Among social reasons we may adduce the generally less 
practical education which girls receive as compared with 
that given to boys, and the almost universal expectation of 
domesticity which is inherent and ineradicable in the con- 
stitution of woman, interfering not only Avitli her prepara- 
tion for active pursuits, but also with her prosecution of 
them, because it reduces the singleness of purpose and in- 
terest with which her duties are discharged, and depreci- 
ates in the eyes of her employer, and justly so, the value 
of services which may abruptly be terminated by mar- 
riage. Nor are these industrial disabilities to be wholly 
cured by any cause that shall not disrupt and destroy so- 
ciety. Just so long as girls grow up in the belief that their 
mission is not to work in a shop, but to adorn a home, 
their education will take shape accordingly. Parents and 
school-boards may lay out courses of study with never so 
much of utilitarian intention, the mind of the girl will se- 
crete sweetness and grace from whatever food is offered 
it. And just so long as the same tender illusion lasts — and 
we know it will outlast much bitter experience — woman 
will serve distraite, if not unhappy, as one who has a 
name she has not yet taken, a city to whicli she has not 
come. If a man marries, he as a rule hcL-ouies a better 
and more stable workman on that account. If a woman 
marries, it is most probable that she will leinc her employ- 
ment ; it is almost certain that if she remains she will be 
a less desirable laborer than before. This expectation 
of domesticity is always likely to exist with greater or less 
force in the female mind, and will inevitably, wherever it 
exists, reduce the efficiency of female labor. 

Yet though there is thus much misapprehension of the 
relation between the wages of women and those of men, 
there can, I think, be no question that the wages of the 

' Mr. Brassey states that in tlie construction of the Lemberg and 
Czernowitz railway, in some places half the people employed were wo- 
men, who earned 1.60 francs a day, while the men earned from two to 
three francs. (Work and Wages, p. 105.) 



WOMAN'S WAG£J3. 375 

former^ are in a degree inadequate to the service rendered, 
after due allowance for all differences of amount and 
quality. If there be such inadequacy, the sole cause 
must, as we have seen (Chapter X.), be found in the fail- 
ure of competition. 

Inasmuch as the failure of competition comes mainly 
through the immobility of labor, let us inquire whether 
female labor is under any exceptional disabilities in respect 
to movement. 

In the first place, it needs to be observed that women 
have far more occasion, relatively, to move to the labor- 
market than men, and have need, therefore, to be far 
more mobile and active. This is due to the fact that the 
industries for which women are physiologically suited are 
highly localized. Wherever there is population, there are 
women wlio feel the necessity of working outside their 
own families for subsistence : yet the opportunities 
for their employment in mechanical work are found 
only here and there. Thus, in Allegheny County, 
Pennsylvania, we find that there were in 1870^ 29,139 
men employed in mechanical labor, and but 1723 
women ; in Erie County, New- York, 11,357 men and but 
960 women ; in Wayne County, Michigan, 11,543 men 
and but 1454 women ; in St. Louis County, Missouri, 
32,484 men and but 3455 women ; in Cook County, Il- 
linois, 24,705 men and but 4652 women ; in Cuyahoga 
County, Ohio, 8698 men and but 791 women. On the other 
hand, there were 5887 women employed in Hillsborough 
County, ISTew-Iiampshire, against 7627 men ; in Andros- 
coggin and York Counties, Maine, respectively 4045 and 
4512 women against 3908 and 3689 men. These are only 

' " It is a curious fact that in the great majority of occupations, the 
average wages of a boy, a woman, and a girl added together amount 
to those of a man." — Dudley Baxter, National Income, p. 49. 

Lord Brabazon gives the average daily pay of French day-laborers in 
agriculture as one franc seventy-five centimes for men, eighty-five cen- 
times for women, and sixty -three centimes for children ; but women 
and children are employed for only a fraction of a year. 

^ Ninth census of the United States (Industry and Wealth, table 
ix. A). 



376 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

given as instances to show liow irregularly and how rarely 
at the best, the opportunities for the employment of 
women in mechanical industry occur. An examination 
of the statistics of industry in the United States discloses 
that of the women employed in mechanical pursuits, forty- 
two per cent are found in only seven counties, comprising 
but seven per cent of the population of the country. 

While women have thus far more occasion relatively to 
move to their market than men, we find them disabled 
therefrom, in a great measure, by physical weakness, by 
timidity, and by those liabilities to misconstruction, insult, 
and outrage which arise out of their sexual characteris- 
tics. Having more need than men to be free to move 
from place to place, they have far less ability to do so. It 
must be remembered that it is not a cpiestion merely of 
taking a journey from home to a place where a " situation" 
has already been engaged, but, it may be, of seeking out 
employment from street to street, and from shop to shop, 
by repeated inquiries, and often through much urgency 
and persistency of application. This is what men have to 
do to "get a place," often going into doubtful localities, 
freely encountering strangers, and sleeping in casual com- 
pany. These, with men, are aujong the conditions of the 
mobility of labor which not only secures employment for 
the individual applicant, but relieves the pressure upon 
the market elsewhere, and oftentimes prevents that pain- 
ful or fatal "ccmgestion of labor" which breaks down 
wages, crushes the hopefulness and self-respect of the ope- 
rative class, and engenders habits of laboring and living 
which it may take long, even under favorable conditions, to 
wear out of the industrial body. 

To state these conditions is to show some of the disad- 
vantages under which women have labored in the past 
from their natural indisposition and disqualification to en- 
counter strangers and make terms for themselves. I 
would not seek to idealize the sex in dealing with so plain 
and practical a matter. No one who has had to do with 
book-agents of both sexes would unhesitatingly award the 
palm for persistency and assurance to the man ; while it 



WOMAIT'S WAGBS. 377 

is proverbial that female venders of fish, in all countries 
and ages, have succeeded so far in overcoming their native 
meekness and bashf ulness as to qualify them fully to hold 
their own whether in a bargain or in a wrangle. JS^or would 
it be just to speak of female labor anywliere as if it were ab- 
solutely immobile. Country girls have always gone to the 
city to find employment in shops and stores ; while the 
cotton factories and the boot and shoe shops of Massa- 
chusetts and Rhode Island have always been filled with 
women from the rural parts of New-England and even 
from the British Provinces. 

Yet, after all allowances that require to be made, it re- 
mains true that while, from the specialization and localiza- 
tion of the industries in which female labor is employed, 
women have far more occasion than men to keep them- 
selves free to seek their own market, they are in fact, from 
many causes, under serious disabilities in respect to move- 
ment from place to place,' with all which that implies for 
females poor and unprotected, and, it may be, also igno- 
rant and fearful. 

While much of this disqualification of woman for seeking 
the labor-market arises out of her physiological conditions, 
and is not to be cured by law or opinion, it is also true 
that no inconsiderable part has been due, in the i ast, to a 
lack of respect and sympathy for her in her capacity as a 
laborer, if not to positive prejudice and even to actual phy- 
sical obstruction^ offered to her industrial movements. 

' The disability which women sufE'-r on account of their sex, when 
the conditions of industry require emigration from the country of their 
birth, may be seen from the following facts brouo^ht out by the Scotch 
census of 1871. Between 15 and 25 years of age there are 105.4 fe- 
males for every 100 males ; between 25 a d 30 years there are 119.7 fe- 
males for every 100 males. (Report, pp xvi, xvii.) 

* " We can not forget that some years ngo certain trades-unionists in 
the potteries imperatively insisted that a certain rest for the arm which 
they found almost essential to their work, should not be used by wo- 
men engaged in the same employment. Not long since, the London 
tailors, when on a strike, having never admitted a woman to their 
union, attempted to coerce women from availing themselves of the 
remunerative employment which was offered in consequence of the 
strike. But this jealousy of women's labor has not been entirely con' 



378 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

Of the insults and violence not infrequently offered to 
women seekin-^- employment in departments of industry 
which men have chosen to regard as exclusively their 
own, it is not necessary to speak. Women scarcely need this 
to restrain them fi-om pursuing their economical interests. 
Intensely sensitive to opinion/ they shrink from the faint- 
est utterances of blame ; while coldness and indifference 
alone are often sufficient to repress their impulses to 
activity. 



fintxi to workmen. The same feeling has extended itself through everv 
class of society. Last autumn a large number of Post-Office clerks ol) 
jected to the employment of women in the Post-Office." — Henry Faw. 
cett. House of Commons, July 30th, 1873. (Speeches, p. 133, 134.) 

" An important strike is now jjoing on in the town of Leicester, and 
what is the cause of it? Certain manufacturers wished to introduce 
women into their factories, and the men claimed a right not only to 
determine the price of labor, but also on what conditions women should 
be permitted to work. Nor is this all. Within the last fortnight 
there has been a great meeting of dclegatc^s of the Agricultural Labor- 
ers' Union. Women were not admitted. Why? On the express ground 
that the agricultural laborers of this country do not wish to recognize 
the labor of women." — Ibid, June 33d, 1874. (TheNew.s' Report.) 

' In their report made to the Local Government Board in 1873, Dr. 
Brydges and Mr. Holmes take note of the peculiar sensitiveness of 
female laborers to the praise or blame of their employers or overseers : 
" It would appear, from statements made to us which we have reason 
to think accurate, that it is very much easier to bring pressure to bear 
upon the energies of female operatives than of male. It is well known 
that with many workmen, especially if they be members of trades- 
unions, the consciousness that their fellow- workmen are present and 
are watching their work, tends ra her to moderate than to intensify 
their zeal. Animated by the common oljject of selling their lal)or 
dear, they are apt to thinlc an exceptionally zealous workman a traitor 
to the cause of labor. With women the reverse would seem to be the 
case. Less able to fix tlieir eyes upon a distant object, less apt to enrol 
themselves in a well-drilled organization for which sacrifices are to be 
made, the ultimate compensation for which themselves and those im- 
mediately connected with them may never, or not for a long time, 
touch, they are far more keenly sensitive to the motives of approbation 
and vanity, and also to those of immediate tangible reward. It would 
seem to be as easy to goad women as it would be difficult to goad men 
into doing the greatest amount of piece-work in a given time. The 
admiration of their companions and the approbation of the overlooker 
appear to be at least as powerful inducements as the increase of their 
wages." (Report, p. 20.) 



W0MA]!f'8 WAGES. 379 

This unfortunate result — namely, a public opinion un- 
favorable, or less favorable than is desirable, to the exten- 
sion of female labor — is doubtless due in some part to the 
comparative newness of the occasion which women have to 
enter the general market of labor, from which it results 
that their entrance is not unnaturally greeted by the body 
of male laborers interested therein as an intrusion threat- 
ening a reduction of their own wages, while the outside 
community, though disinterested, remains indifferent, not 
having been educated up to the point of giving women a 
warm and strong moral support in their efforts to find em- 
ployment, and of providing adequate protection to them 
in the casual and often rude encounters which the search 
for employment may involve. 

The necessity for the employment of women in wage- 
labor not agricultural, in any thing like the extent whicli 
exists at present, dates from the decay of the system of 
domestic manufactures which followed the extensive intro- 
duction of machinery in the latter part of the eighteenth 
century. " The original artisans," says Mr. Mill, " were 
either slaves or the women of the family." ' It was tho 
women who wove and spun, fashioned and sewed, the gar- 
ments, the blankets, and the nets of our ancestors. It m 
true we occasionally find record of women earning wages 
in other occupations.^ Prof. Rogers has pointed out that, 
in the fourteenth century, the thatcher's help, or " homo," 
was generally a woman. ^ But, speaking broadly, there 
was, until the inventions of Watt, H^rgreaves, and 
Arkwright antiquated the distaff and the fopinning-wheel, 
work enough within the house for all the women of the 
family if we except the harvest season, when agriculture 
was, as it is to-day in Europe, the occupation, and in 
Russia the equal occupation, of both sexes.* 

' Pol. Econ., i. 285. ' 

" Brewing and baking were formerly purely domestic operations, 
and hence were performed by women, as the feminine termination ol 
the words brew-ster and back-ster, like web-ster and spin-ster, indicates 

' By 37th Edward III. women were exempted ftom the prohibitiotj 
against exercising more than one craft. 

* In European Russia exclusive of the Baltic Provinces tke siumbef 



380 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

But no longer can the wife and daughter, in a family 
where children must needs go mainly un cared for, and 
housekeeping becomes reduced to the minimum by the 
scantiness at once of space and of food, do their equal 
share, or at an}' rate seem to do their equal share, in the 
support of the household, within the house. All which 
now enters into domestic consumption must come in from 
without ; and so wife and daughter must, or think they 
must, go ont and bring in a part of it. At the same time 
the extension of water and steam-power has made the labor 
of women useful in a thousand operations for which their 
strength was formerly inade(]^uate.' This it is which has 
driven women into the labor-market. In families where 
l)read comes hardly, the services of the house are fore- 
gone, and wife and daughter, no longer working as of 

of females engaged in agriculture is reported as 12,917, 59o agjiinst 
13,444,843 males. In Prussia tlie number of fariu-laboiers was re- 
ported, in 1867, as follows : 1,054,213 fenial. s, 2,232,741 males. In 
England the census-tables sliow the following proportion between the 
sexes in agriculture : 183,450 females, 1,264,031 males. In Scotland 
the numbers are as follows : 50,464 females, 184,301 males. In the 
United States it is only among the late servile population of the South, 
and occasionally among recently-arrived fon igners at the extreme 
West, that women are seen laboring in the fields, even during ihe 
height of the harvest season. But women are probably nowhere em- 
ployed through so long a period in the year as men. Lord Brabazon 
(Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1872, p. 44) gives 
the number of days on which men are employed in France at day labor 
in agriculture, as 200 ; for women the number of days is but 120. In 
England, as Mr. Purdy says, women in agriculture are " employed as 
supernumeraries to the men, and are only taken on at busy times." 
Arthur Young gives the following account of the Palatini s tetiled in 
1 1 eland : " The women are very industrious, reap the corn, ploi,gh the 
• round sometimes, and do whatever work may be going on ; they al^o 
sjiin and weave, and make the children do the same. . . . The industry 
of the women is a perfect contrast to the Irish ladies in the cabins, who 
can not be persuaded, on any consideration, even to ujake hay, it not 
being the custom of the country ; yet they bind corn and do other work 
more laborious." (Pinkerton, iii. 849, 850.) 

' "Where;is the workman," says M. Jules Simon, in L'Ouvritn'e, 
"was once an intelligent force, he is now only an intelligence direct- 
ing a force — that of steam — and the immediate consequence of the 
change has been to replace men by women, because women are cheaper 
and can direct the steam force with equal efficiency," 



WOMAN'S WAGES. 



381 



old for the head of the house, go out to seek strange em- 
ployers and be jostled in public places. Shame on the 
man, if he be man, who will not gladly give them room ! 

Coincidently with this great industrial change, involv- 
ing the necessity of wives and daughters contributing 
by wage labor to the support of the family, have oc- 
curred social changes, of scarcely less importance, which 
have resulted in a steady increase in the proportion' of 
women who are wholly dependent on themselves for main^ 
tenance. What these social changes are I need not point 
out ; the result itself is patent, palpable, and needs no prool 

I have spoken of wife and daughter entering the mar- 
ket of wage labor, as a necessity resulting from the social 
and industrial changes indicated. And so, in a melan- 
choly proportion of cases, it is. Yet there can be little 
doubt that it is sometimes accepted as a necessity where 
more courage and patience and a broader view of self- 
interest would prove that this might be avoided ; and in 
such a case it would often be truer economy to forego 
wages to be earned at the expense of leaving the house 
uncared for. " I find," says Mr. Fraser, Assistant Com- 
missioner on the Employment of Women and Children in 
Agriculture, " that in my own parish, in Berkshire, the 
women have a sort of proverb that ' there's only four- 
pence a year difference between what she gets who goes 



^ These causes operate with, much greater force in some countries 
than in others. The following table shows the number of spinsters 
in each 100,000 women in England and in Scotland severally, as by 
the census of 1871. I only insert the figures for the period 20-65. 



Period of Life. 


England. 


Scotland. 


Period of Life. 


England. 


Scotland. 


20-25 
25-30 
30-35 
35-40 
40-45 


65,160 
35,622 
22,365 
16,844 
14,150 


73,790 
44,290 
30,145 
25,011 
21,866 


45-50 
50-55 
55-60 
60-65 


12,373 
11,694 
10,884 
10,905 


20,150 
19,917 
19,211 
20,342 



England annually celebrates 83 marriages for every 10,000 inhabl 
tants ; Scotland only 70. 



383 THE WAGES i^VESTION. 

out to work and what slie gets who stays at home, and 
she who stays at home wins if " ' 

With something of exaggeration there is, no doubt, 
much of truth in this proverb of the Berkshire women. 
In the eagerness to increase the family income it is not 
sufficiently considered that, in the absence of the wife and 
mother, great loss must necessarily be sustained in the 
expenditure of that income ; and secondly, that the ill- 
effects on the health of the family, on the duration of the 
laboring power, and on the moral elements of industry 
may be sufficient in many cases to offset the nominal gain 
achieved by stripping the house of its service and depriv- 
ing the household of their proper care. The failure to 
appreciate that a penny saved is a penny earned, lies at 
the bottom of many a far-reaching mistake in domestic 
life as in productive industry. Waste in food, clothing, 
and utensils ; waste in laboring force through ill-prepared 
and ill-preserved food ; waste of the vital endowment of 
the rising generation through lack of that constant care 
which is the essential condition of well-being in child- 
hood ; waste of character and the formation of indolent 
and vicious habits through neglect to instruct and train 
the young, and through making the house cheerless and 
distasteful to the mature : the waste in these and many 
other forms which the entry of the wife and daughter on 
wage labor necessarily implies, in greater or less degree, 
will surely balance the addition of many shillings a week 
to the family income.' 

1 Report of 1867-8, p. 17. n. 

" Tlie wear and tear of a neglected home," says Mr. R. Smith Baker, 
" is greater than the income which the wife's labor adds to the weekly 
means ; and he who can earn enough and to spare ought to feel it a 
degradation for the wife of his bosom to mingle in these dangerous 
assemblies. Moreover, a workingman's family is his wealth when 
well brought up ; his bane when sickly and unhealthy." 

2 The disposition to allow married women to undertake paid labor 
in public places varies greatly in different communities. Mr. Carey in 
his Essay on Wages (1835) states that out of one thousand females in 
the Lawrence Factory at Lowell, there were but eleven married wo 



WOMAN'S WAGES. 383 

Yet, after all, there is an increasing multitude of women 
who, through having no house to keep, or through the 
straitness of the family means, have no choice but to en- 
ter the mill or the shop, and submit to the rude hustlings 
of the marketplace — and room has not been made for 
them. 

It may sound strangely that ev^en in the United States, 
where it is of general consent that women are treated 
with higher relative consideration than in any other coun- 
try in the world, respect and sympathy for them are want- 
ing in such a degree as to deprive them o± any part of 
their equitable wages. I speak, however, of respect and 
sympathy for women as laborers. In their " sphere," to 
use the phrase which so exasperates the advocates of 
suffrage without regard to sex, women have always re- 
ceived homage and service, but as wage-laborers in the 
public market they have suffered not a little in the past. 
This has not been from want of chivalry, but from defects 



men (p. 88, 7i.) The proportion in these later days is much greater. I 
am indebted to tbe Hon. Wm. P. Haines for the information that of 
1506 and 1203 persons employed respectively by the Pepperell Manu- 
facturing Company and by the Laconia Company, both of Biddeford, 
Me., engaged in cotton-spinning, 105 in the former and 135 in the lat- 
ter were married women. 

Much indisposition to allow the wife to go into the mill is seen in 
the flax and jute districts of Scotland. Of 784 women employed in the 
mills at Arbroath, only 5^ per cent were married. " It appears," say 
the commissioners of the Local Government Board (1873), " to be con- 
sidered somewhat discreditable for a woman to work in a factory after 
her marriage, and she does so only under the pressure of a stern ne- 
cessity." At the same time almost 28 per cent of the females of Scotland 
were actually bread-winners. This is due to the excess of spinsters 
previously noted. The married women employed in the textile manu- 
factories of England and Wales are estimated by Mr. W. C. Taylor, 
Inspector of Factories, at about 150,000 (Soc. Sc. Trans., 1874, p. 571). 
" Married women in factories are exceptional," says Mr. Phipps in his 
Report of 1870 on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Wurtem- 
burg (p. 223). 

M. LePlay, in his work on the Organization of Labor, dwells strongly 
on the economical advantages of leaving the mother and daughter at 
the fireside. 



384 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

of education. The need that woman is coming to have, in 
modern life, to enter tlie competitions of industry, has not 
become sufficiently familiar to the public mind ; tlie idea 
lias been strange, her image in such garb unwelcome.* 
That public opinion which should open to her avenues of 
employment ; which should be a strong support to her in 
her demands for fair remuneration ; which should be a de- 
fence to her in her close pursuit of employment, in her 
urgent and persistent application for work, in her neces- 
sary exposure to gaze and comment, and in her contact 
with much that is strange and rude, has not yet been cre- 
ated in such a degree as to give to the sex all that freedom 
of industrial movement which might be consistent with 
feminine purity and delicacy. We have not yet come to 
appreciate the obligation which their necessity imposes upon 
us, as men and gentlemen, to follo\v them with our ear- 
nest, active sympathy, and to protect and champion them 
not less in their labor than at dance or festival. 

And what is the remedy ? Agitation and the diffusion 
of correct ideas. Let gifted women continue, as in the 
past, to appeal for public respect and sympathy for their 
sisters in their work ; let the schools teach that public opin- 
ion may powerfully affect wages, and that nothing which 
depends on human volition is " inexorable ;" let the sta- 
tistics of women's wages be carefully gathered and persist- 
ently held up to view. Efforts like tliese will not fail to 
strengthen and support woman in her resort to market, 
thus enabling her the better to realize the condition upon 
which alone she can expect to receive the highest wages 
which the existing state of industry will allow. 

' " Fancy," says Miss Emily Faithful!, " a gentleman seeking remu- 
nerative work sub rosa ! And yet this is the state of mind in which so 
many ladies come to our Industrial and Educational Bureau, that they 
even refuse to state their requirements to the lady manager, but insist 
upon seeing me personally on ' strictly private and confidential business.' 
Public opinion is to be blamed fortius ; and unless the press will help 
us to strike a blow at the false pride now in our midst, parents will still 
neglect to place their daughters in honorable independent posilions "— 
Letter to the London Times, 1876. 



J 



CHAPTER XIX. 

MAY ANT ADVANTAGE BE ACQUIRED BY THE WAGES CLASS 
THROUGH STRIKES OR TRADES-UNIONS? 

It was seen in oiir analysis of the operation of competi- 
tion (Chapter X.) that the members of the wages class on 
their side, and the members of the employing class on 
theirs, act singly, each for himself, with individual spon- 
taneity ; and that out of this complete mobility of the 
individual, in subjection only to his own sense of his 
own interest, issue the highest conceivable industrial 
order and an absolutely right division of burdens and 
diffusion of benelits. 

The question in the present chapter is, whether, there 
being an acknowledged failure of competition, greater or 
less, on the side of the wages class, from ignorance, inertia, 
poverty, or the undue anxiety of individuals to snatch, 
each for himself, at the first employment oii'ered, any 
thing can be added to the real power of this class in com- 
petition, through restraints voluntarily adopted. The 
perfect reasonableness of supposing that some advantage 
might be derived by the wages class from such arrange- 
ments, will be seen if we compare their situation with 
that of an audience seeking to escape from a crowded the- 
atre which has taken fire. There may be time enough to 
allow the safe discharge of every soul, and in that ease 
the individual interest of each person clearly coincides 



386 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

with the interest of the audience taken collectively — 
namely, that he should fall-in precisely according to his 
present situation relative to tlie common place of exit. 
Yet we know that, human nature being what it is, panic 
is likely to arise and a crazy rush ensue, each trying to 
get before his neighbor, with the certain result that the 
discharge of the whole mass will be impeded, and the 
strong probability that not a few will be trampled to 
death. If now, upon men in such a situation, discipline 
can be imposed, and the procedure wdiich is for the inte- 
rest alike of each and of all can be allowed to go forward 
steadily, swiftly, and surely under authoritative direction, 
a great deal of misery may be prevented. Discipline, re- 
straint, create no force, but they may save much waste. 

In just such a situation, say those who are the professed 
advocates of the " cause of labor," is the wages class in 
many if not in most communities. Grant that the true 
interest of each member consists with the interest of the 
whole, no one will assert that each man's interest, as he 
may understand it and be prepared to act on it, neces- 
sarily consists with the good of all. When industry 
slackens and employment becomes scarce, there is the 
same danger to the mass, from the headlong haste and 
greed of individuals, as in the case of the theatre just re- 
ferred to. A mistaken sense of self-interest may even 
pervert competition from its true ends, and make its force 
destructive. If, then, it is urged, bodies of labor can be 
put under discipline so that they shall proceed in order and 
with temper, great injury may be averted : injury which 
once wrought may become permanent. 

There is, surely, nothing unreasonable in this claim. 
Let us, therefore, without prejudice proceed to consider 
the agencies by which, under this plan, it is proposed to 
meet the infirmities of the laboring classes. 

The issue is not whether joint action is superior to the 
individual action of persons enlightened as to their indus- 
trial interests, but whether joint action may not be better 



STRIKES AND THE WAGE-FUND. 387 

than the tumultuous action of a mass, each pursuing his 
individual interest with more or less of ignorance, fear, 
and passion. 

The question of strikes has generally been disposed of by 
economists with a summary reference to the doctrine of the 
wage-fund. Strikes could not increase the wage-fund, 
therefore they could not enhance wages. If they should ap- 
pear 'to raise the rate in any trade, this must be due either 
to a corresponding loss in the regularity of employment 
or to an equivalent loss, in regularity or in rate, by 
some other trade or trades occupying a position of econo- 
mical disadvantage. Hence, strikes could not benefit the 
wages class. But we have rid ourselves of the incubus of 
the wage-fund; and the question of strikes is, therefore, 
with us an open question as yet. We have seen' that the 
amount of wages received by the laborer may be insuffi- 
cient to furnish the food necessary to his maximum effi- 
ciency, and that an increase of wages might, by increasing 
his laboring power, increase the product not only propor- 
tionally, but even more than proportionally, under-feeding, 
whether of men or cattle, being admittedly false economy. 
If a strike should enable a body of laborers to secure such 
an advance against the reluctance of their employers, it 
might easily turn out that the masters would not only not 
be injured, but would be benefited in the result. The 
same would be true of an advance of wages which allow- 
ed the workmen to obtain more light and warmth and bet- 
ter air in more commodious dwellings. The same might 
prove to be the case with an advance of wages which 
merely stimulated the social ambition of the workmen, the 
wages of labor being, in the language of Adam Smith, 
" the encouragement of industry, which, like every other 
human cxuality, improves in proportion to the encourage- 
ment it receives." The same would probably be the re- 
sult, though after some delay, of an advance of wao-es 

^ Pp. 53-58 



388 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

whicli enabled workmen to send tlieir cliildrcn to school, 
thus bringing them into the mill or shop, a few years later, 
far more intelligent and physically more capable than if 
they had been put at work at seven or eight years of age. 
It might easily prove, according to the principles which 
have been laid down respecting the efficiency of labor, that 
such expenditures would be found to be the best invest- 
ment whicli the employer ever made of the same amount 
of money, giving him industrial recruits of a much higher 
order. 

I might multiply illustrations showing how an advance 
of wages whicli masters were unwilling to concede, and 
whicli M^orkmen through their isolated and mutually jea- 
lous and suspicious action would be unable to command, 
if effected through united action might prove to be for 
the interest of both masters and men. 



By others, again, the question of strikes is dismissed 
with the assertion that they generally fail of their objects. 
"Never, in any case," says Mr. R. W. Hopper, "has an 
extensive strike resulted in an advance of wages."' To 
a request to act in a mediation between masters and men, 
Lord Cranworth replied, "In the game, so to say, of com- 
bination the workmen eventually fail."^ M. Theodore 
Fix, in his work Les Classes Ouvrieres,^ writes: "After 

' Fortniglitly Review, August, 1865. 

* Statistical Journal, xxx. 5. 

^ P. 194. 

Doubtless a inucli larger proportion of tlie earlier tlian of tlie 
7ater strikes In England were attended by immediate success. The 
reason may be presumed to be that, after the repeal of the Combinations 
Acts in 1824, the workmen struck simply for bread enough to eat. 
They had been held down by law and ground by an unequal competi- 
tion till they were reduced below the economical point of subsistence. 
As to this the testimony of all reports is unanimous. Strikes made 
for siich a palpable cause are more likely to succeed than those which 
are made, as many of the later ones have been, for doubtful reasons, 
on ill-chosen occasions, or for the enforcement of trades-unions rules 



ARE STRIKES SUCCESSFUL? 389 

making vast sacrifices, tlie workmen almost invariably 
succnmb." 

Granting that this is so in the sense in which the terms 
arensed — that is, that in the great majority of cases work- 
men making a demand and seeking to enforce it by a strike, 
are beaten, and, after the exhaustion of their resources, have 
to go to work again on their master's terms ^ — is this quite 
conclusive of the whole question ? The argument used 
against strikes is, it will be observed, much the same as that 
which was formerly employed by reactionary essayists, and 
even admitted witli reluctance by many liberal writers, in 
proof of the failure of the French Kevolution. The States- 
General had been succeeded by the Assembly ; the Assembly 
by the Convention ; the Convention by the Directory ; the 
Directory had been turned out by the First Consul ; the 
First Consul had been made Consul for life ; the Consul 
had become Emperor ; the Emperor had been driven from 
France ; and after an interval of insolent foreign domina- 
tion, a legitimate prince, unrestrained by a single constitu- 
tional check, untrammelled by a single pledge, led back 
priest and noble, unforgiving and unforgetting, to resume 
their interrupted license. There had been revolution after 
revolution ; constitution after constitution ; there had been 
proscriptions, confiscations, and massacres ; there had been 
untold loss of blood and treasure ; and in the end a king 
had returned who did not accept a constitution, but con- 
ferred a charter. 

It is not an inspiring thought that arguments like these 
were for a whole human generation held suflicient to prove 
that the French Eevolution was a mistake and a failure; 



wMcli must appear to any disinterested person as void of sense and 
against common justice. 

^ Prof. Fawcett, in his Political Economy, lias collected a number of in- 
stances of strikes immediately successful. The best succinct account of 
the strike-movement in England which we have met is contained in 
Ward's Workmen and Wages. The same work also contains much infor- 
mation respecting strikes and trades-unions on the Continent of Europe, 



390 TEE WAGES QUESTION. 

for we know now that the Bonrbons were restored only in 
seeming ; that the restoration of the old regime was for- 
ever impossible. The king and the princes had indeed 
returned, the same race besotted with the vain conceit of 
divine right ; they led back, indeed, the same train of 
priests and nobles, untaught and incapable of learning ; 
but they came back, not to the same, but to another 
France. Is it not conceivable that those who look on the 
submission of a body of laborers after a strike as a proof 
that tlieir entire effort has been fruitless, may commit the 
same mistake as those who looked on the return of 
Louis XVIII. as the restoration of the Bourbons ? But 
perhaps another insurrection, political in form but indus- 
trial in origin, may even better ilhistrate this point. I refer 
to the rising of the peasantry of England in the reign of 
Richard II. " The rebellion,''' says Prof. Bogers,' " ^oasput 
down, hut the demands of the villains were silently and 
effectnally accorded / as they were inasters for a week of 
the position, the dread of another servile war promoted 
the liberty of the serf?'' 

Strikes are the insurrections of labor. Like insurrec- 
tions in the political body, they are a purely destructive 
agency. There is no creative or healing virtue in them. 
Yet, as an insurrection may destroy political institutions 
which have outlived their usefulness, and have become 
first senseless and then pernicious, thus clearing the way 
for an after-work of harmonious construction, so a strike 
may have the effect to break up a crust of custom which 
has formed over the remuneration of a class of laborers, 
or to break through a combination of employers to with- 
stand an advance of wages, where the isolated efforts of 
the individuals of the wages class, acting with imperfect 
knowledge and under a fear of personal proscription, 
would be wholly inadequate to accomplish those objects 

' Hist. Agr. and Prices, i. 8. 



JUSTIFICATION OF 8TBIKE8. 391 

But a strike can only justify itself by its results. ^ Unless 
it is to make way for a better order, it is waste, and waste 
of the worse sort, since not only is a great loss of pro- 
duction incurred," but bad habits are likely to be formed 
in a period of enforced idleness, and bad blood certain to 
be generated by the contest. 

Insurrections mark the first stages of the movement 
towards political freedom. Happy are the people who 
have got past insurrections, and can make their further 
progress " with even step and slow." Strikes are only of 
unquestionable utility in the first stages of the elevation 
of masses of labor long abused and deeply abased. Happy 
is the wages class when it has acquired that individual 
and mutual intelligence and that activity of industrial 
movement which put them beyond the necessity of such 
a brutal resort ! Yet I can not conceive how oue can 
look at the condition of the manufacturing operatives as 
they were left at the repeal of the iniquitous Combina- 
tions acts in 1824, and question that the early strikes in 
England were essential to the breaking up of the power 
of custom and of fear over the minds of the working 
classes, habituated to submission under the terror of laws 
now universally recognized as oppressive, unaccustomed 
to concerted action, illiterate, jealous, suspicious, tax- 
ridden, and poverty-stricken. What but some great strug- 
gle could have taught them the self-confidence and readi- 
ness for self-assertion which should overcome that fearful 
inertia ? What else would have impressed the employing 



' Not necessarily, as we have shown on a preceding page, by its im- 
mediate results. 

^ The loss to production by strikes is often grossly overestimated. 
Not a few strikes take place because of a threatened reduction of 
wapres in consequence of previous over-production, and the strike re- 
sults in clearing the market more thoroughly than would be done 
otherwise. Then, again, the enforced inactivity of a strike for higher 
wages is often succeeded by an increased activity, which does some- 
thing to make good the loss of time. 



393 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

classes witli a due respect for their laborers, or inspired 
that lively sense of the possible consequences of with- 
standing a just demand which is essential to competition 
in any true sense ? " Masters are always and everywhere 
in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination 
not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate." ' 
It is well enough for the peace of industrial society and 
tlie mutual understanding of all parties, that masters 
should be made to know that two can plaj'^ at that game. 
There is nothing to quicken the sense of justice and 
equity like the consciousness that unjust and inequitable 
demands or acts are likely to be promptly and fearlessly 
resisted or resented. 

LEGISLATION AGAINST STRIKES AND COMBINATIONS. 

We have seen that by the Statute of Laborers in Eng- 
land, workmen wei'c not allowed to ask or receive wages 
above a fixed amount, not even, on pain of imprisonment, 
to accept "meat, drink, or other courtesy" (25th Edward 
III.) in addition to the stipulated sum. It will readily 
be believed that coml)inations of workmen for increase of 
wages were not favored of the law. By statute of 2d and 
3d Henry YI., it was premised that " artificers, handi- 
craftsmen, and laborers have made confederacies and 
promises, and have sworn mutual oaths not only that they 
should not meddle one with another's work, and perform 
and finish that another hath begun, but also to constitute 
and appoint how much work they shall do in a day, and 
what hours and times they shall work ;" and therefore it 
was enacted that " if any artificers, workmen, or laborers 
do conspire, covenant, or promise together, or make 
oaths that they shall not make or do their works but at 
a certain price and rate, or shall not enterprise or take 
upon them to finish that another had begun, or shall do 

* Adam Smitli, Wealtli of Nations, ii., 70. 



LAWS AGAINST COMBINATION'S. 393 

but a certain work in a day, or shall not work but at cer- 
tain hours and times," every person so offending should be 
visited in severe penalties, the punishment for the third 
offence being loss of ears and infamy. This statute was 
followed thick by others, so that the act of 1824 which 
exempts from criminal responsibility' meetings and com- 
binations for fixing wages and altering the hours of work, 
provided no violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, 
or obstruction be done or offered towards masters or 
other workmen, repeals, if I have rightly counted them, 
twenty-eight acts, representing the wisdom of Parliaments 
in the reigns of ten different kings or queens. 

While the law of England thus, by direct inhibition, 
sought to reduce to the minimum competition for labor, 
no statute, so far as I have observed, made even the de- 
cent pretence of restraining masters from combinations, 
until the beginning of the present century. " We have 
no acts of Parliament against combining to lower the 
price of work,'" said Adam Smith, " l)ut many against 
combining to raise it." By statute of dOth G-eorge III. 
(c. 106), however, "all contracts, covenants, and agree- 
ments whatever, in writing or not in writing, made or to 
be made, by or between any masters or other persons, for 
reducing the wages of workmen, or adding to or altering 
the nsnal hours or time of working, or for increasing the 
quantity of work," were declared unlawful, nnder a 
penalty of £20. 

Tliis act is also specially noticeable for two provisions : 
one, that no mastjr should act as justice of the peace 

i"Yet they were not made lawful."— Sir William Erie, Trades- 
Unions, p. 26. 

A combination of workmen is thus, in England, still to be held to 
examination in the light of the general principles of the law by which 
unreasonable restraint of trade is prohibited. ' The practical applica- 
tion of these principles," Sir William remarks, " lies in indictment for 
violation of duty towards the public, or in action for violation of a 
private right." (Ibid.) 

■■^ Wealth of Nations, i 70. 



394 TEE WAGES qjJESTIOK 

for executing any of its provisions (sec. xvi.), a conces- 
sion not yet made in respect to disputes between agri- 
cultural laborers and their employers ; the other, that 
" whereas it will be a great convenience and advantage to 
masters and workmen engaged in manufactures that a 
cheap and summary mode be established for settling all 
disputes that may arise between them respecting wages 
and work," arbitrators should be appointed, under legal 
sanction, for determining the respective rights of the two 
parties in case of controversy. This last well-intentioned 
provision was, however, admitted by an act of four years 
later (44th George ni.,c. 87) to have failed of its purpose. 

But in 1824 (5th George IV., c, 95) Parliament repealed 
all the statutes which prohibited combinations of work- 
men. In 1825 this measure was perfected (6th George lY., 
c. 129) under the lead of Iluskisson, who announced the 
broad principle that " every man is entitled to carry that 
talent which nature has given him, and those acquire- 
ments which his diligence has obtained, to any market in 
which he is likely to obtain the highest remuneration." 

In France, combinations of workmen for the purpose of 
influencing wages were prohibited with great severity by 
the Penal Code of 1810, which also punished, though with 
less severity, combinations of employers for the purpose 
of unjustly depressing wages. By the law of 1849 the 
penalties decreed against combinations of masters and of 
workmen were equalized. By the law of May 25th, 
1864, combinations free from violence or show of vio- 
lence were sanctioned. " Le point de depart de la loi," 
said M. Ollivier, who reported the bill, " est celui-ci : 
Liberte absolue des coalitions, repression rigoureuse de 
la violence et de la fraude."' The act of 1864 did not 
fail of its purpose through being neglected by the work- 
ing classes, who seemed to accept the permission to strike 
as a sort of legislative recommendation. 

^Chapter xii. of tlie report of M. Duoarre, already cited, contains 
tlie test of the laws of IblO, 1840, and 1804 relating to combinations. 



STRIKES IN EUROPE. 395 

" There is scarcely a trade in France," said Mr. Ward, 
writing in 1868, " of wliicli, during the last three years, 
the members have not combined for the purpose of in- 
creasing the rate of wages and diminishing the hours of 
labor, and their efforts to this end have usually met with 
success." ' 

In Belgium, strikes are freely resorted to, especially in 
Brussels,'^ yet perhaps nowhere is the workman's indus- 
trial responsibility for the abuse of this power more direct 
and certain than in this kingdom, owing to its geographi- 
cal position and its peculiar commercial relations. 

From the Netherlands M. Locock reports : " Such a 
thing as a strike is here almost unknown. Once or twice, 
indeed, it has been attempted, but it met with little sym- 
pathy, and was speedily suppressed." ' The reason for the 
non-appearance of the strike movement in this kingdom 
is found in the fact that the provisions of the Penal Code 
of 1810 prohibitory of combinations (arts. 415 and 416), 
which we have seen were repealed in France by the law of 
25th May, 1864, are still in force here. 

Throughout North Germany liberty to combine was 
granted by articles 152 and 153 of the Industrial Code 
(Gewerbe-Ordnung ") of June 21st, 1869, and the same 
provisions have since been extended throughout the 
Empire : a vast change, whether we consider the extent of 
territory and of population affected, or the severity of the 
regime abolished by the Code of 1869.'' 

In Austria strikes are prohibited, and rarely occur. 
Ringleaders may, by the Code (art. 481), be punished 
with imprisonment, or expelled from the empire. 

' Workmen and Wages, p. 255. 

2 Mr. J. G. Kennedy's report (Textile Factories, 1873, p. 24, 25). 

* Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1870, p. 25. 

*Tlie full text of this Code will be found (in translation) in the Re- 
port on the Condition of the Industrial Classes of Prussia, 1870, ppi 
101-141. 

^ I speak generally. As I understand the matter, combinations had 
been legalized in Prussia four or five years previously. 



396 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

From Norway, II.B.M. Consul-Gen eral Crowe reports: 
" No instance is on record of any combination having 
occurred to coerce masters with the view to obtain higher 
wages." ^ 

In Denmark, Mr. Strachey reports that strikes seldom 
occur. "In 1818 the printers struck and received an ad- 
vance in wages ; in 1865 the bricklayers and carpenters 
struck for ten days ; in 1867 the carpenters again struck, 
with the result of an additional twopence per week for 
their trouble."" 

In Italy, the Penal Code is stringently prohibitive of 
combinations and strikes, the penalty being three months' 
imprisonment to all participants, and six months' to ring- 
leaders.^ Strikes, however, occur in spite of the law. 
Mr. Ward gives a short list* of them, some successful, 
some unsuccessful, some resulting in compromise. The 
more recent statements of Mr. Ilerries ^ show no tendency 
to an increase in their number or severity. 

In Russia, though there is no general organization of 
the laboring classes, Mr. Egerton ° reports : " Strikes are 
by no means unusual." 

TRADES-UNIONS. 

The expediency of trades-unions is usually discussed as 
if connected with the exj^ediency of strikes so directly and 
intimately that a decision upon one Avould be conclusive 
in respect to the other. Thus, many persons, having 
proved to their own satisfaction that strikes have had a 
great agency in advancing wages, have assumed that the 
existence of trades-unions is thereby justified. Others, 

'Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1871, p. 379. 
^ Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1870, p. 507. 
^H.B.M. Consul Colnaghi's Report, 1871, p. 284 (articles 385-7 of the 
Code). 

* Workmen and Wages, p. 283. 
'1871, pp. 209-348. 

* 1873, Textile Factories, p. 113. 



TRADES -UNIONS AND^ STRIKES. 397 

having demonstrated, as they think, the mischievous ten- 
dency of trades-unions,' have carried their conclusions out 
against strikes as if there were a vital connection he- 
tween the two systems. No such relation in principle 
exists. Strikes are, as has been said, of the nature of in- 
surrection. Trades-unions are associations for facilitating 
insurrection, like secret political clubs, and the desirability 
of these may well be regarded as a different question. 
The virtue of an insurrection is that it comes because it 
must come — comes because evils have grown intolerable, 
and to destroy is better than to conserve. We may rec- 
ognize the office of violence in breaking up an utterly 
outworn order and clearing the ground for a reorganiza- 
tion of society and industry, yet fail to recognize an 
advantage in making systematic provision, in advance, for 
the easy resort to violence. Doubtless we might say, not 
only that, of all successful insurrections, those have been 
most beneficent in their results which have broken forth 
unprepared, out of the indignant sense of wrongs suffered 
and of burdens borne past patience, but also that, as a 
rule, insurrections are more likely to be successful when 
in the main spontaneous. It is not meant that any popu- 
lar rising was ever unpreceded by more or less of con- 
ference among the natural leaders of the injured classes. 
But I apprehend that those risings which have been most 
elaborately devised, and in which the machinery of insur- 
rection has been most extensively employed, are generally 
those which have most signally and often ignominiously 
failed. There is a double reason for this : on the one 
hand, there is a concert in the common sense of injury 
which 2:ives a wonderful instantaneousness to the action of 
outraged masses ; on the other hand, there is often a singu- 
lar impotence in conspiracy. But this is by the way. The 

1 '« Worse even than plague, pestilence, or famine, combinations 
among workmen are the greatest social evil wliicli,in a manufacturing 
or mining community, afflicts society." — Sir A. Alison (History of 
Europe, xx. 206.) 



398 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

comparison has been introduced only to enforce the 
thought that the proved expediency of strikes would not 
carry with it the expediency of the permanent organiza- 
tion of hibor for the initiation and conduct of strikes. 
Being a destructive agency, these should never be resorted 
to except in a real and serious exigency which would, 
among any generous and manly class under a free govern- 
ment, furnish an organization for the occasion more 
vital and apt than any derived from a state of industrial 
peace. 

But this assumes that the body of the working classes are 
at least tolerably intelligent, understanding their own in- 
terests and the conditions of their industry, having among 
them men of natural leadership, capable of uniting for a 
common cause, and of remaining firm and true to each 
other in enforcing their demands. It assumes, moreover, 
that a considerable proportion, at least, of these classes 
have something in the way of accumulations from past in- 
dustry, and, as a consequence of this, have also a certain 
dciiTee of credit with the tradino; class. But if, as is the 
melancholy fact in many countries of Europe, the body of 
laborers are found in a condition, no matter how induced, 
of dense ignorance, unaccustomed to the conmiunication 
of thought, and to association for political or other pur- 
poses, with only here and there a laborer so fortunate or 
so wise as to have saved any thing from the avails of past 
labor : then doubtless they must be long drilled to subor- 
dination and concert of action in associations permanently 
maintained, and the funds requisite for the initiation and 
conduct of strikes must be accumulated in advance by the 
painful exactions of " the society " out of scant weekly 
earnings. 

And it will be among the infelicities of such a situation, 
that these organizations Avill be dragged into strikes 
founded on demands which can not be maintained, which 
ignorance or passion on the part of 'he members — it may be 
of a bare majority only — or meddlesomeness and arrogance 



OTHER OFFICES OF TRADES -UNIONS. 399 

Oil the part of officers and managers, have caused to be 
put forward without due consideration of the state of the 
market or the equities of distribution : demands which, 
by reason of tlieir offensiveness or their extravagance, mas- 
ters would not, without terrible punishment, concede if they 
could, and perchance could not if they would concede 
without ultimately checking production and diminishing 
employment. Such Remands workmen would be much less 
likely to make if they had to combine especially for the pur- 
pose. The reason of the case would have to be shown very 
clearly to overcome the doubts of the cautious or the more 
experienced. There would be deliberation, the weighing 
of the cause, and the counting of the cost. But wdiere a 
discipline approaching military perfection has already 
been established, where authority has been erected, and 
men have come, more or less voluntarily, but most ex- 
plicitly, under obligation to obey the decrees of that au- 
thority, action upon claims of doubtful legality or expedi- 
ency is likely to be prompt and peremptory. 

I have thus far spoken of trades-unions as if they were 
maintained only for the purpose of initiating and conduct- 
ing strikes, for increase of wages or reduction in the hours 
of labor. Trades-unions do, however, perform three other 
offices : first, as friendly societies ; secondly, as sequester- 
ing trades and limiting their membership ; thirdly, in 
legislating upon the methods of industry. 

Of trades-unions as friendly societies insuring their 
members against the contingencies of sickness, loss of 
tools, involuntary loss of employment, or providing the 
rites of burial and a pension to the widow or to dependent 
children,' it is not needful to speak here at any length. 

^ The objects of tlie " Amalgamated Society of Carpenters," com- 
prising 190 branclies and 8261 members, were thus stated by Mr. 
Applegarth, the Secretary, before Sir W. Erie's Commission : " To 
raise funds for the mutual support of its members in case of sickness, ac- 
cident, superannuation ; for the burial of members and their wives ; 
emigration, loss of tools by fire, waste, or theft, and for assistance to 



400 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

A controversial advantage might be taken, by one inimi- 
cally disposed, of the fact, brought so startlingly to light by 
recent actuarial inquiry, that nearly all the friendly soci- 
eties of Great Britain have been conducting their business 
on an unsound basis, and that, in consequence, they have 
involved themselves in obligations which their realized and 
anticipated funds will be inadequate to meet ;' but it 
ought, in fairness, to be remembered, in extenuation, that 
the British Government was in 1819 discovered, by Mr. 

members out of work ; also, for granting assistance incases of extreme 
distress not otherwise provided for by the rules." Tlie proposed mem- 
ber " must be in good health, have worked five years at the trade, be 
a good workman, of steady habits, of good moral character, and not 
more than forty-three years of age." The admission-fee is 2.s. GrZ. ; the 
weekly payment Is. The several benefits are as follows : " Donation 
benefit for 12 weeks, 10s. per week ; for another 13 weeks, 6«. per 
week ; for leaving engagement satisfactory to branch and executive 
council, 15s. ; tool benefit, to any amount of loss (or when a man has 
been a member for only six months, £5) ; sick benefit for 26 weeks, 
12s. per week, and then 6s. per week so long as his illness continues ; 
funeral benefit, £12 (or £3 10s. when a six-months' member dies) ; acci- 
dent benefit, £100 ; superannuation benefit for life : if a member 2a 
years, 8s. per week ; if a member 18 years, 7s. ; if a member 12 years, 
5s. The emignition benefit is £6, and there are benevolent grants, ac- 
cording to circumstances, in cases of distress." 

The following is the exhibit of the liabilities and assets of the " Man- 
chester Unity," an association numbering 426,GG3 members, and hav. 
ing 3488 places of business : 

LIABILITIES. 

Present value of Sick Benefits £8,548 592 

" " Funeral Benefits to members 1,775 162 

" " '• to wives 444 086 

£10,767 840 

ASSETS. 

Present value of contributions £6,473 581 

" of additional resources 392 127 

Capital 2,558 735 

£9,424 393 
Deficiency £1,343 447 



FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 401 

Finlaison, to have been for twelve years doing quite as 
foolish a thing in the sale of its annuities.' The friendly 
societies have, so far as appears, shown every disposition 
to correct an error which it has taken the actuaries of Eng- 
land some time to discover. 

Of the advantages of making the trade the unit of life 
and health insurance, much could be said. Only twc 
points need be mentioned : first, it affords the very per- 
fection of advertisement and agency. This is the weak 
point of life insurance as it exists outside of natural associ- 
ations, like trades and professions. The report of the In- 
surance Commissioners of Massachusetts for 1870 shows 
that, of the companies doing business in that State, seven- 
teen per cent of the gross receipts went to expenses ; and 
of this, ten and a half per cent went in commissions to 
agents. But this is not all. Even agencies sustained at 
such an expense fail to give the system of life insurance any 
thing like the extension which its economical advantages 
deserve, while among the working classes who especially 
need insurance, since calamities with them cut so deep 
into the quick and work such lasting injury, the ordi- 
nary sort of life insurance performs scarcely an appreciable 
office. But a friendly society, coniined to a particular 
trade, having a natural constituency more or less bound 
together by personal acquaintance and common interests, 
and actually managed by its contributors, furnishes, as has 
been said, the very perfection of advertisement and 
agency. Secondly, to make the trade the unit of life and 
health insurance, affords the most equitable rule of contri- 
bution. Wide differences exist as to the healthfulness and 
longevity of occupations, as has been shown by some in- 
stances previously cited.^ In the friendly society men 

^ The loss to the governnieiit was estimated by Mr. Finlaison at 
£95,000 a year. 

' Pp. 36-38. Speculators in British annuities under the bill of 1808 
had a penchant for Scotch gardeners, these appearing to constitute the 
longest-lived class recognized in the statistical tables. 



40S THE WAGES QUESTION. 

who belong to long-lived and healthy trades, and whoso 
money wages are perhaps considerably reduced in conse- 
quence thereof, are not obliged to pay for the sickness and 
the premature mortality of members of other trades, who 
are perhaps paid much higher rates, in compensation for 
the dangers and hardships of their work. 

But of trades-unions as friendly societies it is enough 
here to say that these humane and useful provisions can be 
better accomplished by associations which do not assume 
or attempt to legislate on the methods of industry, or to 
dictate terms to employers, than by societies which are lia- 
able at any time to be dragged into protracted and ex- 
hausting contests, and compelled to expend in industrial 
warfare the funds long and painfully gathered against the 
providential necessities of labor. The trade-clul)s of Den- 
mark and the Netherlands and the " artels" of Russia are 
examples of friendly societies which avoid this dangerous 
confusion of functions. The distinction between trade-so- 
cieties and benefit-societies is also very strongly marked in 
Prussia. In 1860 the relief -societies amounted to 3644, 
with an aggregate membership of 427,15)0 and an annual 
income of nearly one million dollars.' 

In France these societies are, under the decree of 1852, 
classified as " approved " or " authorized." The total 
number in 1867 was 5829, of which 4127 were approved 
and 1702 authorized. Those which are approved conform 
to the requirements of the statutes, and enjoy certain privi- 
leges in consequence. The funds of the societies at the 
close of 1867 amounted to forty-six millions of francs, the 
annual receipts rising to fourteen millions. Members had 
received sick-allowances during that year to the extent of 
3,998,216 days. The total membership of both classes of 
societies reached 750,590, of whom 120,387 were women.' 

In Denmark, Mr. Strachey reports not more than one 



^ Ward's Workmen and Wages, p. 209. 

^ Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1870, pp. 479-483. 



FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 403 

Avorknian in fifteen, or at tlie outside one in ten, as sub- 
scribing to siclv-clubs.' In Italy, Mi-. Ilerries reports about 
600 friendly societies, with a niembersliip not ascertained.'' 
In Russia the only species of friendly societies existing is 
the " artel," a small club rarely of more than thirty or 
forty members, more often of but ten to twenty.' 

It is in Great Britain that we find friendly societies 
most widely spread and taking deepest root among the 
working classes. The Commissioners in their Fourth Re- 
port (1874) estimate that in England and Wales there are 
32,000 such societies, with an aggregate of four million 
members and an accumulation of funds in hand in excess 
of fifty-five millions of dollars. They add an estimate that 
these societies save to the poor-rates ten million dollars a 
year." 

But, secondly, besides the offices already indicated, 
trades-unions effect the object, whether desirable or not, 
of sequestering^ their respective trades, reducing the ac- 
cessions by apprenticeship to the minimum, and practical- 
■ ly prohibiting all accessions to their number, after the 
first general muster, except through the door of appren- 
ticeship, thereby strictly limiting the number of workmen 
in each occupation and keeping the price of their services 
artificially high. 

By what means the constant warfare upon non-society 
men is carried on ; by what arguments and appliances 
able workmen are convinced that it would be for their 
interest to enter these close labor-corporations; to what 
shifts the excluded are put for employment in the pres- 
ence of powerful societies, proscribing them and all who 

' Report on the Condition of the Industrial Classes, 1870, p. 509. 

'Report for 1871, p. 290 

' Mr. Egerton's Report of 1873. 

^ Report, pp. xvl, xvii. 

" This appears to be the sole office of the associations of artisans 
(•'esnaf") in European Turkey. Mutual succor is an object which 
scarcely appears in their organizations. 



404 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

sliall employ them, or on what terms of humiliation they 
nre at times tolerated, it is not my purpose to speak in de- 
tail here. To the objection that, by the organization of 
snch close industrial corporations, the great body of labor- 
ers are, in a degree, sliut out from the benefits of employ- 
ment, while tlie enlianced prices of labor, thus protected 
from competition, are in a great measure paid by the un- 
protected wage-laborers, Avhose condition is rendered only 
the more miserable, the advocates of trades-unions make 
in substance these answers : 

First, that without such restrictions the increase of un- 
instructed and unprovided labor would cause every trade 
to be overrun in turn, the wages in each being slowly but 
surely brought down, and the whole body of workmen de- 
graded to the lowest level of mere animal subsistence ; that 
nearly all the trades in England were in that condition 
when the unions undertook the work of restriction ; that 
for those trades whicli are now happily rescued from such 
a condition and lifted to a position of industrial independ- 
ence, to remove their barriers out of sympatliy Avitli the 
general mass of labor and admit all freely into competi- 
tion, would afford but the briefest relief, inasmuch as the 
improvidence of the ignorant, weak, and vicious would 
soon fill the space thus opened with just as hungry and 
wretched a crowd as now surges outside the barriers, and 
the sole effect would thus be to ruin the privileged trades 
without helping their less fortunate brethren, as a drown- 
ing man catches and drags down one who might swim and 
save himself. 

Secondly, that instead of the associated trades throwing 
themselves thus away in a delusive Quixotism, they do in 
effect accomplish a much better result for the less skilled 
laborers by maintaining a high standard of work and 
wages, and by acting, in their strong estate, as a bulwark 
against the invasions of " capital," affording example and 
opportunity to all inferior bodies of labor to associate and 
govern themselves by similar methods. 



TRADE -UNION EXGLU8IVENES8. 405 

Tliirdlj (what has been intimated above), that there is 
really no limit to the principle of association among 
wage-laborers, and no reason, in the nature of the case, 
why every branch of industry, even to the day-laboring 
class, should not be protected by similar organizations and 
regulations. The recent extension of agricultural unions 
among the scattered farm-laborers of England is pointed 
to with not a little force as proving tlie adaptation of 
the system of industrial federation to conditions the least 
favorable. When, then, it is said all industries are thus 
organized and established, none will be at advantage or 
disadvantage relatively to another, but all will be at an 
advantage with respect to the employing class. Mean- 
while the result of universal federation Avould not be 
hastened but retarded by our relaxing our restrictions 
and abandoning the good principle. It is wholesome 
rigor which we exercise ; our measures seem seliish, and 
indeed they are taken with consideration only of our own 
interests, but the results are sure to favor the whole 
cause of labor. 

In each and all these claims there is enough of truth 
to entitle them to somewhat more respectful treatment 
than has been accorded them. The student of history 
recognizes that the ancient guilds of which the trades- 
unions are the indirect successors performed a high office 
in their time.' Seliish as were the aims and proscriptive 
as were the methods of the guild, it had yet its part to 
play in the strife of the people against king and priest 
and noble ; and it played that part, on the whole, well. 
Selfish and proscriptive as the modern trade-union has 

1 " Althougli it is undoubtedly true that in a normal condition of 
society the system of protection and monopoly, of which the corpora- 
tions were the very ideal, is extremely unfavorable to production, in 
the anarchy of the Middle Ao^es it was of very grea^ use in giving the 
trading classes a union which protected them from plunder and en- 
iil)]ed them to incline legislation in their favor." — Lecky's History of 
li.ilionalism, ii. 240. 



406 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

been, it has curbed the authority of the employing class 
which songlit to domineer not in their own proper 
strength, but througli a cruel advantage given them by 
class legislation, by sanitary maladministration, and by 
laws debarring the people in effect from access to the 
soil. My difference with such defenders of trades-unions 
as Mr. Thornton is merely as to the time when these 
should be put away as an outgrown thing. I find no 
ground for expecting any benefit to the wages class as a 
whole, from restricting the access to professions and trades 
in any country where education is general, where trade is 
free, where there is a popular tenure of the soil, and 
where full civil rights, with some measure of political 
franchises, are accorded to workingmen. 



But it is as associations for legislating respecting the 
methods and courses of industry, that trades-unions acquire 
their highest importance. 

Strong as the passion of meddling is iu all political 
communities, it appears nowhere so strong as in organiza- 
tions of workingmen ; mischievous as have been the re- 
strictions upon trade and industry, imposed in the past 
by governments, it would be difficult to matcli some of the 
latest trades-union edicts out of the statutes of Edward III. 
and Richard II. 

The Reports of the British Commissioners (Sir William 
Erie, chairman) of 1867 show that there were in force 
among trades-unions rules like the following, to be enforced, 
wherever the unions should find themselves strong 
enough, by fines levied on the masters, or by strikes : 

Prohibiting a man from employing his own brother or 
son, or even from laboring with his own hands at his own 
work, unless duly admitted to membership of the proper 
trade society. 

Prohibiting a workman to work out of his trade, so that 
a mason may not, for the shortest time, do the least part of 



TRADE- UNION B ULE8. 407 

the work of a bricklayer, or a bricklayer undertake the 
smallest casual patch of plastering or of stone -laying, or 
a carpenter linish a remnant of bi-icklayer's or mason's 
work, and if called in to fit a door or set a post, he may 
not, if he find the space accidentally left too small, remove 
so much as one loose brick, but must wait for the appro- 
priate artisan to be summoned. 

Prohibiting a workman, wliere an assistant is usually re- 
quired, to be his own assistant, for never so small a job or 
short a time, so that a plasterer, called to a piece of work 
where an assistant would not be actively employed for one 
eighth of the time, must still come attended by his " homo," 
who, if he can not be kept usefully busy, will, for the 
good of the craft, remain dignifiedly lazy during the 
whole operation. 

Prohibiting any one to be known as an exceptionally 
good workman in his trade ; against walking fast to the 
place of work when in the employer's time ; against carry- 
ing more than a certain load, as eight brick at a time in 
Leeds, ten brick in London, or twelve brick in Liverpool. 

Prohibiting use to be made or advantage taken of na- 
tural agents, of improved machinery, or of special local 
facilities. Tlius we have regulations against brick being 
wheeled in a barrow instead of being carried in a hod, for 
no other reason alleged than that brick can be wheeled 
more easily than carried ; against brick being made by ma- 
chinery or stone dressed by machinery, so that inventions 
of vast capability remain almost unused in England ; 
against stone being dressed, even by hand, at the quarry 
where it is soft and can be easily worked. 

Prohibiting with more than Chinese intolerance the 
use within small districts, arbitrarily circumscribed, of 
material produced outside, so that brick can not be carried 
into Manchester from brickyards distant only four miles 
without the certainty of a strike ; prohibiting an employer 
from taking a job outside the place of liis own residence, un- 
less he shall take with him at least one half the workmen to 



408 TEE WAGES QUESTIOK 

be employed ; prohibiting members to " work for any gen- 
tleman, at any job whatever, who finds his own materinls 
or does not employ a regular master in the trade to find 
tlie same ;" and, finally, making war at every stage npon 
" pieee-woi'k/' 

It is not to be understood that any one society has 
adopted all these rules, or that all societies have adopted 
any one of tliem ; but, to a very gi-eat extent, rules like 
those recited, and many others quite as minutely restric- 
tive, are enforced by the whole striking-power of the trade. 

All such regulations and restrictions must clearly be 
judged by the principle wliich has been applied to State 
legislation on similar subjects. If they can be shown, be- 
yond any reasonable doubt, to be correspondent to human 
infirmities in such a way that labor, on the whole and in 
the long run, has actually a freer resort to its best market 
by reason of them, then they stand justified on economical 
grounds. But if they are not thus required to correct lia- 
bilities which threaten the mobility of labor, they must be 
pronounced as mischievous as they are irritating and insult- 
ing. And this liability and strong proclivity of associa- 
tions of workingmen to intermeddle and dictate concern- 
ing the methods and courses of industry must be accepted 
as a valid, practical argument fi'om human nature against 
trades-unions. 



COlSrCLUDING KEMAEKS. 

Throughout the foregoing discussions 1 have written un- 
der a constant sense of my accountability as a teacher of 
political economy. I have adduced no causes, recognized 
no objects, but such as 1 deemed to be strictly economical. 
No ethical or social considerations have moved me con- 
sciously in the composition of this work. Causes have, it 
is true, been here adduced which are not commonly recog- 
nized as economical, but it has only been where reasons 
could be shown sufRcient, in my judgment, for attributing 
to these causes, which are perhaps primarily ethical or so- 
cial, a clear potency within the held of industry, affecting 
either the production or the distribution of wealth ; for I 
hold that it can not be questioned that whatever aifects 
either of these is, in just so far, an economical cause. 
Thus, sympathy for labor (pp. 362-372), if it serves in any 
degree to make competition on the side of the laboring 
class more active and persistent ; if it takes any thing from 
the activity and persisteucy with which the employing 
class use the means in their jDower to beat down wages, or 
lengthen the hours of work, or introduce young children 
into painful and protracted labor, becomes, in just so far 
as it has such an effect, a strictly economical cause, to be 
recoguized, and, so far as may be, its force measured, by 
the writer on the distribution of wealth. The economist 
recognizes indolence (pp. 174, 175), the indisposition to 
labor, as an economical cause, holding men back from the 
acquisition of wealth which they might obtain but for the 
force of this principle. Why is not public opinion, re- 
straining men, as it so largely does, from the acquisition 
of wealth by means held to be dishonorable or oppressive 
to the weaker classes of the community, also and equally 
to be recomized as an economical cause ? 



410 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

I re*2;ret that this treatise should be so strongly contro- 
versial in form ; but the fact is, certain doctrines which I 
deem to be wholly unfounded have become so widely 
spread that one can make no progress, by so much as a 
step, towards a i^hilosophy of wages without encounter- 
ing them. These doctrines are : 

1st (pp. 136-140). That there is a wage-fund irrespec- 
tive of the numbers and industrial quality of the laboring 
pojDulation, constituting the sole source from which wages 
can at any time be drawn. 

2d (pp. 161-165). That competition is so far perfect that 
the laborer, as producer, ahvays realizes the highest wages 
which the emj)loyer can afford to pay, or else, as consum- 
er, is recompensed in the lower price of commodities for 
any injury he may chance to suffer as producer. 

3d (pp. 243-246). That, in the organization of modern 
industrial society, the laborer and the capitalist are toge- 
ther suflicient unto ])roduction, the actual employer of 
labor being regarded as the capitalist, or else as the mere 
stipendiary agent and creature of the cajjitalist, I'eceiving 
a remuneration which can properly be treated like the 
wages of ordinary labor. 

These doctrines I have found it necessary to contro- 
vert ; and in so doing have not cared to mince matters or 
pick phrases. For any excess of controversial zeal I shall 
easily be justified, if I have substantiated the positions I 
have taken ; on the other hand, if I have been unduly 
presumptuous in assailing doctrines sanctioned by such 
high authority, a little too much harshness in argument 
will not add appreciably to my offence. 

It may, perhaps, be well to guard against misconstruc- 
tion on a single point. In getting rid of the wage-fund, 
we have not reached the result that wages can be in- 
creased at any time or to any amount whatever. We 
have merely cast aside a false measure of wages. Wages 
still have their measure and their limits, and no increase 
can take place without a strictly economical cause. 



CONCLUDING BEMABKS. 41\ 

Wages can not be larger than the product except bj force 
of pre-existing contract. Wages must, in the long run, 
be less than the product by enough to give the capitalist 
his due returns, and the employer his living-profits. 

What then has been effected by doing away with the 
wage-fund ? We have shown (Chapter YIII.) that the 
remuneration of hired labor finds its measure not in a 
past whose accumulations have been plundered by class 
legislation and Avasted by dynastic wars, but in the pre- 
sent and the future, always larger, freer, and more fortu- 
nate. If capital furnishes the measure of wages, then 
that measure is derived from the past, such as it has been, 
and no increase of energy, intelligence, and enterprise 
on the part of the laboring class can add to, as no failure 
on their part can take from, their present remuneration, 
which is determined wholly by the ratio existing between 
capital and population. If production furnishes the 
measure of wages, as is here maintained, then the wages 
class are entitled to the immediate benefit of every im- 
provement in science and art, every discovery of re- 
sources in nature, every advance in their own industrial 
character (Chapter IX.). Surely it is not a small matter 
that the laborer should find the measure of his wages in 
the present and the future, rather than in the past ! 



But that portion of this treatise on which I should be 
disposed most strongly to insist, as of extended conse- 
quence in the philosophy of wages, is the doctrine that 
if the wage laborer does not pursue his interest, he loses 
his interest (Chapter X.) in opposition to the view so 
generally maintained by economists, that if the wage 
laborer does not seek his interest, his interest will seek 
him ; that economical forces are continually operating to 
relieve and repair the injuries of labor ; and, specifically, 
that all sums taken in excessive profits, or for the exces- 
sive remuneration of capital, whether through combina- 



412 THE WAGES QUESTION: 

tioiis of employers or capitalists or through the disabili- 
ties of the working class, are sure to be restored to wages. 
To the contrary, I have sought to show that, in a state 
of imperfect competition : 

First, wages may be reduced without any enhancement 
of proiits, tlie difference being, not gain to the employer, 
but loss to mankind tlirough the industrial degradation of 
the laborer (Chapter lY.) Secondly, for so mucli of the 
sums taken from the laboring class by reduction of wages 
as tlie employers or capitalists may at the time secure in 
excessive profits or excessive interest, there exists no 
adequate security, under the operation of strictly economi- 
cal forces, that it will be fully returned to the wages 
class in a quickened demand for their labor, inasmuch as 
luxuriousness and indolence (pp. 237-40, 251) will in- 
evitably enter, among the majority of euqiloyers, to waste 
in self-indulgence a portion of the profits so acquired, or 
to take something from the activity and the carefulness 
with which future production will be pursued. Thirdly, 
in respect to such industri;d injuries as have just been de- 
scribed, economical forces by themselves tend (pp. IH5, 166) 
to perpetuate and continually to deepen the injury, put- 
ting the laborer at a constantly increasing disadvantage 
in the exchange of his services. 

If these three propositions have been substantiated, it 
follows with absolute certainty that the doctrine of the 
schools, that in a state of imperfect competition the em- 
ployer and the capitalist are the guardians of the laborer's 
interests and the trustees of his wages, is most fallacious, 
those interests being, in truth, only secured when placed in 
his own keeping (pp. 211, 212), those wages being only his 
own when paid into his hands, and that, to enable him thus 
to maintain his rights in the distribution of the product of 
industry, he must be qualified by an education which is 
wholly extra-economical, for which the community, 
through either its social or its political agencies, must 
make provision. 



CONCLUDING BEMABK8. 413 

This brings ns face to facewitli the doctrine of Laissez 
faire, which teaches that the spontaneous action of in- 
dividuals, each seeking his own interest on his own in- 
stance, guided and helped at most by the purely social 
forces of the community, will achieve the best possible 
industrial results ; and that the interference of govern- 
ment, operating by constraint and compulsion, under the 
sanction of law, can only be mischievous. Keasons have 
been shown for believing that Lais8ez fairs, so long and 
loudly proclaimed a principle of universal application, 
is nothing but a rule of conduct (pp. 162-4) applicable in 
certain conditions ; a rule very useful, indeed, when duly 
subordinated to higher considerations, but mischievous 
when allowed to bar the way to clear, practical oppor- 
tunities for advancing the industrial condition of man- 
kind ; a ride, in short, which, like fire or water, is a good 
servant but a bad master. 

Yet, in reducing Laissez faire from the rank assigned 
it in most economical treatises, to its true grade of a prac- 
tical rule, good in certain conditions only, we have not 
reached the result that State interference is therefore desi- 
rable at any and every point where the spontaneous action 
of individuals shall be seen to be inadequate to achieve 
the highest good of all classes. We have merely put the 
objection to paternal government on grounds which will 
bear examination. State interference, however well in- 
tended, however clear the occasion, is certain in some 
degree to miss its mark, and to work more or less of posi- 
tive mischief in any attempt to remove the evils incident to 
individual action. Legislation is always more or less un- 
wise ; administration always falls in some degree short of 
its intent (pp. 1T2, 1Y3). Certainly no one can entertain a 
stronger sense of the evils of the regulation by law of the 
industrial concerns of the people than the writer of this 
treatise. State interference with industry is only justi- 
fied where the admitted mischiefs of restriction are heavily 
overborne by an urgent occasion for preventing the per- 



414 THE WAGES QUESTION. 

manent degradation of the laboring classes tliroiigli the 
operation of economical forces which the individual is 
powerless to resist. 

Admitting, then, that it is eminently desirable to reduce 
the action of the organized public force to the minimum 
consistent with the above object, shall we not say that 
government can not relieve itself from tlie necessity of 
frequent and minute interferences with industry in any 
other way to so great an extent as by, 1st, insisting on the 
thorough primary education of the whole population ; 2d, 
providing a strict system of sanitary administration ; 3d, 
securing by special precautions the integrity of banks of 
savings for the encouragement of the instincts of frugality, 
sobriety, and industry ? 

Each of these things is contrary to the doctrine of Laissez 
faire ; yet I, for one, can not find room to doubt that, on 
purely economical grounds, the action of the State herein 
is not only justifiable but a matter of elementary duty. 
A little interference with the freedom of individual action 
here will save the necessity of a great deal of interference 
elsewhere. If the State will see to it that the whole body 
of the people can read and write and cipher ; that the 
common air and common water, which no individual vigi- 
lance can protect, yet on which depends, in a degree which 
few even of intelligent persons comprehend, the public 
health and the laboring-power of a population, are kept 
pure ; and that the first feeble efforts of the poor at better- 
ing their condition and saving "for a rainy day" are 
guarded against official frauds and speculative risks, it 
may take its hands ofi at a hundred other points, and 
trust its citizens, in the main, to do and care for them- 
selves. These things therefore are demanded by the true 
economy of State action. 

But, even so, I find to my own satisfaction at least a 
present necessity for legishation and administration in the 
interest of health, in the case of all industries where large 
numbers of laborers of differing sexes, ages, and degrees 



CONCLUDING BEMABES. 415 

are aggregated, especially where other than manual power 
is employed. Factory acts prohibiting labor for all 
classes beyond the term which physiological science ac- 
cepts as consistent with soundness and vigor ; restricting 
within limits carefully adapted to the average capability of 
effort and endurance the employment of children and of 
women also, so long at least as women are denied suffrage 
on the ground either of mental inferiority or sexual un- 
litness for contact with what is rough and vile ; and pro- 
viding a full and frequent sanitary inspection of air and 
water, from garret to cellar, in all buildings thus occupied: 
acts like these geem, at least in the present, to be justified 
and demanded, not more by social and moral than by 
economical considerations (pp. 35Y-9). For it must ever 
be borne in mind, in such discussions, that those things are 
economically justified which can reasonably be shown to 
contribute, on the whole and in the long run, to a larger 
production, or, production remaining the same, to a more 
equable distribution of wealth. 



INDEX. 



Adams, John, the paper luuuey of the 
American Revolution, 16. 

Agricultural wages paid largely in 
kind, 20-4; agricultural laborers in 
England crippled early by rheuma- 
tism, 38 ; agricultural truck not for- 
bidden in England, 327. 

Agriculture, great irregularity of em- 
ployment in, 27, 28, 82, 33 ; law of 
"Diminishing Returns" in, chap. v. ; 
difficulty of applying co-operation to, 
280, 381. 

Air, purity of the, affecting the effi- 
ciency of labor, 60-4. 

Alison, Sir Archibald, History of 
Europe, 54, 75n., U8n 133//,., 
180«., 268m., 317, 318, 35.5, 397n. ; 
(Report on the Payment of Wages 
Bill, 1854), testimony respecting 
truck, 331-333. 

Allotment system, the, 25. 

Ames, Dr. , Sex in Industry, 373. 

Annuities, mistake of the British 
Government respecting sale of, 400, 
401. 

Applegarth, William, objects and 
methods of the Amalgamated Soci- 
ety of Carpenters, 399. 

Apprentices, statute of (England), 
306, 307. 

Apprenticeship made the condition of 
entrance to many trades by union 
regulations, 403-5. 

Arbitration, 394. 

Argyle, Duke of, famine in India, 
118w. ; necessity for restrictions 
upon labor, 357. 

Arithmetical increase of subsistence, 
102. 

Ashworth, Mr., comparative cost of 
clothing from cotton, wool, and flax, 
122«. 

Austria, co-operation in, 288 ; restric- 
tions upon industry, 309, 310 ; 
marriage statistics, 356 ; factory 
legislation, 360 ; strikes, 395. 



Avarice, in masters and einj)loyer8, 
opposes true self-interest, 59, 
164. 

Babbage, Charles, Economy of Man- 
ufa.ctures, 98, 257, 379/1., 280«., 
282/1. 

Bagehot, Walter, varying efficiency ol 
labor, 47 ; Lombard Street, 230. 

Baines, Mr., imorovidence of the 
cottage population of Leeds, 
350n. 

Baker, R. Smith, false economy of 
the labor of married women in fac- 
tories, 382)/. 

Bastiat, Pred'k., Harm,onies of Polit- 
cal Economy, 'i59n. 

Batbie, M., Nbuveau Cows de V Econ- 
omic, 44/i., 49»., 54, 65. 

Baxter, R. Dudley, National hicom.e, 
30/i., 31, 33, 38, 375/j. ; Local Taxa- 
tion, 323. 

Bazley, Sir Thomas, accidents in 
mining in England, 36«. 

Beaulieu, M., Les Populations Ouv- 
rihres, 78. 

Belgium, statistics of height and 
weight, 50, 51 ; intemperance in, 
78/^.; ratio of bread-winners to de- 
pendents, 136/1. ; proportion of for- 
eigners in the population, 1 84 ; co-op- 
eration in, 287 ; marriage statistics 
of, 356 ; no factory legislation in, 
361 ; laws against strikes and com- 
binations in, 395. 

Beverley,Mr., marriages early in Indi-i, 
356/1. 

Biggs, Wm., testimony respecting 
frame rents, 334. 

Birth-rate, within different occupa 
tions, 191 ; effect of injudicious pooi 
laws upon, 333, 323. 

'' Black Death," the, industrial conse- 
quences of, 304. 

Blanqui, M., Cours d^ Economie In- 
duslrielle, 59n. 374't. 



il8 



INDEX. 



Board, to agricultural laborprs, 20, 21. 

Bodio, Jjowis^Uassedi RUparmio, 350. 

Bonar, Mr. , relation of employers and 
laborers in Switzerland, 'ZQ^n. 

Boot and shoe manufacture, irregu- 
larity of employment in, 80 ; iatro- 
duotion of machinery into, 189. 

Brabazon, Lord, payment of agricul- 
tural wages in France, 20w. ; food 
of the laboring population, .56«., 78 ; 
town and country rents, 118;i. ; 
wages of women and men in agricul- 
ture, 37o?t., 3S0«. 

Brassey, Thomas, Work and Wages^ 
efficiency of labor among various 
nationalities, 45, 46, 72 ; diet of 
East Indians, 118m. ; payment of 
wages to French laborers, 35G?i. ; 
women in railway construction, 
374w.; Address at Halifax, 277-278. 

Bread winners, ratio to dependents, 
126^., 191. 

Brewster, Messrs. , co-operative enter- 
prise, 283«. 

Briggs, Messrs., co-operative enter- 
prise, 282. 

Brickmaking, irregularity of employ- 
ment in, 28 ; employment of women 
and children in, 53, 202. 

Brittany, low stature of peasantry of, 
50 ; language of, 175?i. 

Britton, J. W., co-operative enterprise, 
283». 

Caimes, J. E., Essays in Political 
Economy, effects of the gold dis- 
coveries on prices, 14». ; the doc- 
trine of laisMz /aire, 162«, 108, 173; 
insufficiency of the employers' sense 
of self-interest, 164 ; The Slave Pow- 
er, inefficiency of slave labor, 72 ; 
The Logical Method of Political 
Economy, (Ed. 1875) the law of dim- 
inishing returns in agriculture, 94n. 
lOO^t ; ratio between population and 
subsistence, 119 ; the office of econo- 
mic definition, 218 ; Some Leading 
Principles of Political Economy, 
etc., 137w., 184; theory of "non- 
competing groups," 19.5-7; profits 
the reward of abstinence, 231 ; 
profits at or near the minimum, 
233 ; excessive profits restored to 
wages, 237, 238, 253 ; co-operation, 
264-265 ; are strikes s-uccessf ul ? 
298w.; excessive friction of retail 
trade, 314, 315. 

Caird, James, dwellings in Scotland, 
61 ; Prairie Fanning, 'din.; 

Canada, efficiency of labor in, 45. 

Cantillon, M., ratio of breadwinners 
to dependents, I26n. 

Capital, often supplied by the persons 
who perform labor in production, 
8 ; does not furnish the measure of 

- lb* 



wages, ; 130, 131 ; yet wages are 
largely advanced out of capital ; 
does capital include land ? 224-5 ; 
are the returns of capital at the 
minimum or not ? 233, 237 ; does it 
make any difference to the wages 
class whether the returns of capital 
are at the minimum or not V 237-41. 

Capitalist class, the, chap. xiii. ; not 
coincident with employing class, 
229, 244, 245 ; dependent equally 
with the laboring class, on the em- 
plojdng class, 290, 291. 

Carey, H. C, Essay on Wage.'f, 141, 
3827*. 

Carpentering trade, irregularity of 
employment in, 28, 32. 

Carpenters, the Amalgamated Socie- 
ty of, 399. 

Catholic countries, holidays in, 29: 
priesthood, influence in favor of 
early marriages, 35()«. 

Census, United States, 1870, 66, 180, 
375 ; Ireland, 1851, 111 ; Scotland, 
1871, 175«., 191, 377. 

Chadwick, Edwin, cost of rearing a 
child, 'So?i. ; employers prefer high- 
priced labor, 41m.; effects of drill 
upon laborers ; 72 ; difficulty of re- 
moving laborers, 18.5, 2.57 ; effects 
of education upon the condition of 
the laboring class, 353. 

Chalmers, Thomas, Political Econo- 
my, 322'(. 

Chamberlain, E. M., Sovereigns of In- 
dustry, 288w. 

"Channel Islands," the, tenure of 
land in, 208. 

Charles II. (England), industrial legis- 
lation of his reign, 308. 

Chateaubriand, M., wages a later form 
of slavery, 295. 

Cherbuliez, A. E., Precis de la Science 
Economique, 131. 

Cheerfulness in labor, 72-77. 

Chevalier, M., Lectures, 99, 105«. 156, 
170 ; Travels in ihe United States, 
180^1. 

Children, irregularity of their employ- 
ment in agriculture, 33 ; employed 
on work unsuited to their strength, 
52, 53, 167, 168, 201-3 ; legislation 
respecting the employment of, 356- 
62. 

China, food habits of the people, 118 ; 
immobility of the population, 176. 

China scourers, excessive mortality 
among, 37. 

Cider truck, 23, 327. 

Cleanliness of person, affecting efficien- 
cy of labor, 60, 61. 

Clerical profession, duration of life in, 
37. 

Clifford, Frederick, The Agricnllnral 
Lock-ow. 0/1874, 47«., 117, 118/t. 



INDEX. 



419 



Clipperton, Consul, speech differences 
among population of France, 175?i. 

Clothing, its importance to the effi- 
ciency of the laborer, 58 ; relative 
expenditure of different classes. for, 
117/*.; is cheap clothing desirable? 
122 ; comparative cost of clothing 
from cotton, wool, and flax, 122n. 

Coinage, changes in, affecting nominal 
wages, 13 

Cobden, R., English peasantry di- 
vorced from the soil, 20Sw. 

Colwell, Stephen, Ways and Mcatis of 
Payment, Vdn. 

Competition, when perfect, secures an 
absolutely right distribution of 
wealth, 157 ; imperfect or unequal 
competition may depress and de- 
grade the laboring class, 165, 166, 
230, 221,239-41, 368/1, 385, 386 ; Prof. 
Cairnes' theory of "Non-competing 
Groups," 195, 202, 221, 222; compe- 
tition opposed by the force of cus- 
tom, 311. 

Communal property in Switzerland, 
351. 

Consumption of wealth defined, 4. 

Consumptive co-operation, 283-8. 

Co-operation, defined, 247 ; erroneous 
characterization of, by Prof. Cairnes, 
262-5 ; its real object is to get rid of 
the employing class, 265-8 ; antici- 
pated adva,ntages of, 268-72 ; its lim- 
ited success, 272-75 ; its difficulties, 
275-80 ; applied to agriculture, 281 ; 
partial co-operation, 282-3; consump- 
tive co-operation siibject to fewer 
difficulties, 283-4 ; anticipated ad- 
vantages of, 284-6 ; statistics of, 
287-8. 

Continuity of employment, the em- 
ployer's interest in, 300-2 

Continuity of production, the employ- 
er's interest in, 298-9. 

Com Laws, repeal of, effect on English 
agriculture, 258. 

Corsica, annual migration into, from 
France, 187«.. 

Cotter tenancy, 9, 212. 

Cotton manufacture, irregularity of 
employment in, 30. 

Cotton goods, cost of, compared with 
woollens, 122w. 

Courcelle-SeneuU., M., Operations de 
Banque, 252. 

Cowell, Mr., effect of English poor laws 
on female chastity, 322. 

Cow-land, concession of, 23 ; profits 
estimated, 24. 

Coxe,Wm., Travels, the bearing of the 
Swiss peasantry, 260. 

Cranworth, Lord, strikes always futile, 
388. 

Crowe, H. B. M. Consul - General, 
strikes in Norway, 396. 



Currency, fictitious, effects upon wage 
labor, 310-3. 

Custom, its office in protecting the 
weaker classes against unequal com- 
petition, 311. 

Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Spe- 
cies, 104. 

Debts, small: shall they be protect- 
ed by law ? 350^^. 

Definitions in political economy, 218. 

Degradation of labor, the, chap. IV. 

Denmark, proportion of foreigners in 
the population, 184; co-operation in, 
287, 288 ; restrictions upon industry 
removed, 309 ; savings-banks sta- 
tistics, 350?i. ; strikes, 396 ; trade 
clubs, 402. 

Dependents, ratio to breadwinners, 
126?^. 191. 

Devon, Lord, his commission on the 
condition of Ireland, 370. 

Diffusion theory of taxation, 160, 316-8. 

" Diminishing Returns" in agriculture, 
law of, chap. v. : does not apply to 
mechanical industry, 98; affecting 
wages, 150. 

Distribution of wealth defined, 4 ; il- 
lustrated, 5, 6 ; in treating thf> ques- 
tions of distribution we have to do 
with industrial classes, not func- 
tions, 7 ; the problem of distribution, 
chap. X. ; deemed by Chevalier less 
important and difficult than the 
problem of production, 156. 

Distributed exchanged for undistri- 
buted wealth, the effect on wages, 
219-223. 

Division of labor always a source of 
mechanical advantage, 90, 95 ; up to a 
certain point tends to increase agri- 
cultural wages, 147-9. 

Ducarre, M., Salaires et Rapports 
entre Ouvrlers et Patrons (1875), 
87, 187 w., 274, 309n., 341?i., 394m. 

Dupin, M., his researches into French 
industry, 47. 

"Dusty Trades," mortality of, 36. 

Dwellings, laborers', often unfit for 
habitation, 61-4 ; effects of unsani- 
tary and inadequate habitation on 
the moral elements of industry, 86 ; 
proportional expenditure of different 
classes on lodging, 117. 

Earnings, extra, in trades, 24, 35; 

harvest, in agriculture, 2Qn. 
Eden, Sir F. M., History of the Poor^ 

347?7.. 
Education, influence on efficiency ot 

labor, 65-7 ; relative expenditure 

of different classes, for, 117w.; loss 

of wages involved in, 123. 
Edward III., industrial legislation oi 

his reign, 304, 305, 307, 379. 



420 



INDEX. 



Edward TV., law against truck, 326. 

Edward VL, pauper legislation, 307, 
o20. 

Egerton, H. B. M. Consul, ineflSciency 
of Russian labor, 44 ; irregularity of 
factory attendance, 48 ; feebleness 
of the industrial desires of the Rus- 
sian peasantry, 137w. ; no factory 
legislation in Russia, 9(32 ; strikes in 
Russia, 396 ; " artels," 403. 

Elizabeth, Queen, industrial legislation 
of her reign, 306, 307, 330. 

Emigration of artisans from Great Bri- 
tain forbidden by law prior to 1834, 
307. 

Biuployers of labor sometimes working 
at their trades, or personally super- 
vising the laborers, 10 ; the sense of 
their self-interest not always suffi- 
cient, 59, 60, 164 ; profits their ob- 
ject in production, 139, 130 ; em- 
ployers a distinct industrial class, 
337, 338 ; not necessarily ca[)italists, 
238, 239 ; under imperfect competi- 
tion employers are not the guardians 
of the laborers' interests, 339, 340, 
358 ; the employer the master of the 
situation, 390, 391 ; incapable em- 
ployers live at the expense of the 
laboring class, 354-6 ; employers 
stimulated by increased competition 
on the side of the laboring class, 
256-8 ; paid in some degree in honor 
and social distinction, 359 ; said by 
Adam Smith to be always in combi- 
nation to lower wages, 393. 

Employing class, the, chap. xiv. ; to 
be distinguished from the capitalist 
class, 344, 345 ; a false emjjloying 
class, 347-50 ; characteristics of the 
true employing class, 351, 353 ; this 
class in Switzerland, 259, 360 ; it is 
the object of co-operation to get rid 
of the employing class, 363-8 ; has 
either the employed or employing 
class an economical advantage over 
the other ? chap. xvL 

Employed, the, none others belong to 
the wages class, 206, 307 ; the dis- 
tinction between the employed and 
the non-employed the greatest struc- 
tural fact of industrial society, 331. 

Employment, the question of, is the 
true wages question, 369, 370, 390, 
391 ; regularity of, affecting real 
wages, 26-33 ; continuity of, the em- 
ployers' interest in, 300-2. 

England, payment of agricultural 
wages, 20 ; duration of laboring 
power, 34, 35 ; efficiency of labor 
compared with that of India, 42 ; of 
various European countries, 43-6 ; 
north and south Ou England, relative 
efficiency of labor of, 47 ; statistics 
of height q,nd weight, 50, 51 ; food 



of laborers, 54 ; degradation of tht 
laboring population, how effected, 
83-4; food habits of the people, 
118, 130, 13471.; ratio of breadwin- 
ners to dependents, 136;*.; rise of 
the wages-fund doctrine, 140 ; the 
peasantry divorced from the soil, 
308, 311 «.; effect on agriculture of 
the repeal of the corn laws, 358 ; 
co-operation in England, 373, 373, 
383, 386, 387; laws in restraint of la- 
bor, 304-9 ; poor laws, 319-34 ; mar- 
riage statistics, 356, 381 «.; factory 
laws, 3.59, 360 ; rents influenced by 
public opinion, 367 ; legislation 
against strikes and combinations, 
393, 393 ; friendly societies, 403. 

Engel, Dr., relative expenditure of 
families on food, clothing, etc., 116, 
117. 

Entrepreneur, the, (see Employing 
Class). 

Erie, Sir Wm., the law of strikes, 
393 ; report of his commission on 
Trade Unions, 399, 406. 

Excliange of Wealth defined, 4 ; illus- 
trated, 5, 6. 

Exchange of distributed for undis- 
tributed wealth, its effect on wages, 
6, 319, 230. 

Factory legislation in England op- 
posed by political economists, 163 ; 
its economical justification, 167, 17S; 
its history iu Europe, 356-63. 

Faithfull, Miss, public opinion un- 
friendly to female labor, 384. 

Famine, restricting jwpulation, 111, 
113; periodical iu India, 118?*.; Irish 
famine of 1846-7, 131. 

Farmer, the American, 5, 9, 227. 

Fashion, changes in, working import- 
ant effects on industry, 178-179. 

Fawcett, Henry, I'oiUical J^'conomy 
(McMillan, 1863), the Allotment sys- 
tem, 25«.; food of the laborers of 
the West of England, 56 ; wages are 
to be increased at the exjaense of 
profits, 57/1., 333, 234; equivalency 
of subsistence and wages, I'SSn. ; 
di/Ferences in local wages m England, 
187 ; transfer of labor from agricul- 
ture to manufactures, 304 ; co-opera- 
tion in agriculture, 381; strikes some- 
times successful, 389. The Ecoyi.om- 
ic Position of the British Laborer, 
laboring class insufficiently clothed, 
58 ; statement of the wage-fund 
doctrine, 139; Speeches, truck, 336; 
opposition to the extension of femala 
labor, 377. 378«. ; JJaily News, con- 
dition of agricultural laborers near 
Salisbury, 346. 

Ffrench, Mr. , higgling iii Spanish retail 
trade, 315/t. 



INDEX. 



4St\ 



Fellows, J. testimony respecting 
truck, 331 «. 

Pinlaison, A. G., statistics of loss of 
time by sickness, 28?)..; discovers 
error of British Government in. sale 
of annuities, 400, 401. 

Finnic, Mr., comparison of American 
Negro and East Indian laborer, 43>i. 

Fix, Tht3odore, Les Classes Ouvrihres. 
Mining accidents rare in France, 
37«.; ill-success of strikes, 388. 

Food, in its relation to laboring force, 
5o-8 ; relative expenditure of dif- 
ferent classes for, 117h. ; habits in 
respect to, of various nations, 118-24; 
is cheap food desirable? 121-4. 

France, payment of agricultural wages 
in, 20 ; of mechanical wages, 31 ; du- 
ration of the laboring power of the 
population, 34, 35 ; efficiency of la- 
bor compared with other countries, 
43, 44, 46; North and South of, 
varying efficiency of labor, 47 ; sta- 
tistics of height and weight, 51 ; food 
of the laboring population, 54 ; town 
and country rents, 118??.; speech-dif- 
ferences among population, 175«. ; 
proportion of foreigners, 184 ; peas- 
ant proprietorship general, 309 ; 
frugality of the peasantry, 235 ; co- 
operation in France, 374, 283, 287; 
comparative freedom of industry, 
309 ; taxation imder the old re'gime, 
317 ; marriage statistics, 356 ; factory 
legislation, 360, 361 ; laws against 
strikes and combinations, 394, 395 ; 
friendly societies, 403. 

Francis, Sir P. , good work not appre- 
ciated in Turkey, 60n.. 

Fraser, Mr., economy of woman's 
labor, 381. 

Free- Traders, distinguished from the 
"Manchester" school, 161, 162. 

Frugality, amongst Irish in America, 
124 ; proportionately greater among 
laborers than among employers, 235; 
not encouraged by large and sudden 
rise of wages, 236 ; encouraged by 
co-operation, 271, 273 ; giving the 
wages class an advantage in compe- 
tition for the product of industry, 
345-8 

Gairdner, Prof, unsanitary condition 
of Glasgow, 61. 

Gallatin, Albert, the industrial free- 
dom of the United States, 181?*. 

Gangs, agricultural, in England, 201. 

Gardeners, longevity of, 37, 401?i. 

Garnier, Jos., Traite (f Economie Poli- 
tique., 34?t. 

Geometrical increase of population, 
103. 

George III. , industrial legislation of 
his reign, 306, 330, 359, 393, 394. | 



George IV., industrial legislation of 
his reign, 394. 

Germany, payment of agricultural 
wages in, 20 : industrial code re- 
quires payment of mechanics' wages 
in money, 21 ; food habits of people, 
118 ; peasant proprietorship general, 
209 ; co-operation in Germany, 274, 
287 ; restrictions on industry, 309 ; 
factory legislation, 360 ; strikes, 
395. 

Germans easUy adapting themselves 
to the ways of other people, 187n. 

Gibbon, 29?i., 257. 

Gilbert's act (English Poor Law), 330, 
o21. 

Gleaning of fields, in part payment of 
wages, 22. 

Girdlestoiie, Canon, the agricultural 
laborers of England, 38 ; food of 
Devon peasant, 56 ; unsanitary con- 
dition of dwelliiigs in Devonshire, 61. 

Goltz, Th. Frh, von der, Die Lage 
derLandlichenArbeiter im Deutschen 
Reich, 20 

Gould, H. B. M. Consul ; efficiency of 
Swiss factory labor, 44w. ; loss of 
wages by school attendance, 123; 
industrial desires of the Svsiss 
peasantry, 127«. ; character of Svidss 
employers, 259, 260 ; co-operation in 
Switzerland, 274, 282. 

Grattan, Consul, intemperance in 
Belgium, 78?i. 

Great Britain, consumption of liquors, 
349 ; savings bank statistics, 350 ; 
friendly societies, 403. 

Greece, holidays in, 29 ; efficiency of 
laborers, 44«. 

Greek Church, holidays in, 29. 

Greenhow, Dr., the effects on health, 
of dry-grinding the metals, 36 : the 
heat in copper mines, 38w. 

Greg, W. R., Social Enigmas, 103. 

Guilds, predecessors of the modem 
Trades Unions, 228 ; remains of, in 
Europe, 309 ; their beneficial influ- 
ence, 405. 

Hallam, Henry, Constitutionalllistory 

of England, 369w. 
Haines, W. P., married women in 

factories, 383?i. 
Harmonies, the Economic, 160, 197, 

220, 321, 240, 316. 
Harrison, Frederick, 183, 272, 377w., 

279«., 291?i. 
Hastings, Geo. W., facility of the 

poor iu becoming paupers, 324. 
Head, Mr. , statistics of retail trading, 

285. 
Hearn, Prof. Plutology, 37, 67, 76, 

195, 196, 246. 
Heath, Mr., English Peasantry, ^In. 

23, 34. 



423 



INDEX. 



Henry VL, industrial legislation of 

his reign, 893. 
Henry VHI. , industrial legislation of 

his reign, 330 
Herries, Mr., payment of wages in 

Italy, 21 ; co-operation, 283 ; factory 

legislation, 363 ; strikes, 396 ; 

friendly societies, 4(i8. 
Hindoos, loss of time by holidays, 29 ; 

inefficiency of labor, 43. 
Hirt, Dr., Kranklieiteu der Arbeit er, 

36. 
Holidays, loss of time by, 29 ; pve- 

scribed by factory legislation, 360, 

361. 
Holmes, H. B. M. Consul, good work 

not appreciated in Bosnia, 60«. 
Holyoake, George J., extent of waste 

in production, 48« ; co-operation, 

286. 
Hopefulness in labor, 73-7. 
Hopper, R. W., strikes never success- 
ful, 388. 
Horner, L., Employment of Children 

in Factories^ 167, 360. 
Hours of labor, 167, 168, 359-63 
Hungary, the nobles of, f i-eeing their 

serfs, 74, 75 ; taxation under the old 

regime, 318. 
Hunter, Dr., Famine Aspects of India, 

111, 113. 
Hufikisson, Mr., free trade in labor, 

394. 

Immigrants into the United States, 
accidents of their location, 181-3; 
into Prance, Macedonia, and Corsica, 
18771. 

Improvements, unexhausted, in agri- 
culture, 381/i. 

India, efficiency of labor in, 43, 46 ; 
ineffective machinery employed, 67 ; 
famines, 113; food habits of the 
people, 118 ; immobility of the pop- 
ulation, 177. 

Industry, manufacturing, incessant 
movement of, 178. 

Inglis, H.,24, 61, 76. 

Insurance, Life, is expensive and fails 
to reach the working classes, 
401, 

Intelligence, a factor of the laborer's 
efficiency in production, 65-7 ; in- 
fluences the distribution of the pro- 
duct, 353-4, 

Intemperance lowers the efficiency of 
labor, 78, 87; the great foe to fru- 
gaUty, 349, 350. 

Interest, the term used in this treatise 
only of sums paid for capital actual- 
ly loaned, 235, 226 ; is interest at 
tne minimum ? 234. 

Inventions const/tute an economical 
reason for increase of wages, 
146, 147. 



Ireland, the pig formerly paying tlw 
rent, 24 ; duration of the labori g 
power in, 34, 35 ; inefficiency of laboi 
before the famine, 43, 45, 46 ; sta- 
tistics of height and weight, 50 ; food 
of the laboring population, 55 ; un- 
sanitary condition of dwellings, 61 ; 
proverbial indolence of the popula- 
tion accounted for, 76; the famine 
of 1846-7, 111 ; food habits of the 
people, 118 ; tenure of the soil, 213 ; 
relations between landlord and ten- 
ant influencing rents, 368-7. 

Irish, in America, their frugality, 124 ; 
their accidental location, 183 ; iu 
England, jealousy of, 176/t; their 
early marriages at home and abroad, 
355. 

Italy, payment of wages in sulphur- 
mining, 31 ; peasant proprietorship 
increasing, 309 ; public sentiment 
protects the cultivator, 211w; 
co-operation, 382; factory legislation, 
363 ; rents influenced by public 
opinion, 368 ; strikes, 396 ; friendly 
societies, 403. 

Jarvis, Edward, cost of rearing chil- 
dren to be charged against their 
wages, oon.. Sin. 

Jefferson, Th., the paper money of the 
American revolution, 16. 

Johnson, Dr., eggs and pence in the 
Highlands, 17. 

Johnston, Prof., Notes on North Amer- 
ica, 93 /t. 

Jones, Richard, Political Economy, 43, 
135«., 208, 211«., 213«., 315, 317. 

Justices of the peace (England), em- 
powered to fix the rates of wages, 
306 ; must be landed proprietors, 366. 

Kane, Dr., Industrial Resources oj 
Ireland, 43, 79, 80. 

Kennedy, John, manufacturing im- 
provements stimulated by industrial 
distresses, 257. 

Kennedy, J. G., strikes in Belgium, 
395. 

Labor, often performed by the person 
who supplies capital in production, 
8 ; mobility of labor essential to com- 
petition, 163 ; can labor be accumu- 
lated and saved ? 293-4. 

Labor, cost of, real distinguished from 
nominal, 40 ; efficiency of, cavises of 
differences in the, chap. iii. ; in con- 
nection with natural agents deter- 
mines the amount that can be paid 
in wages, 131. 

Labor-power, its durat'on an element 
in determining wages, 33, 402 ; cost 
of rearing children to age to labor, 
33, 34. 



INDEX. 



429 



Labor question, not identical with the 
wages question-, 206. 

La'jorers, the several classes of, 9 ; the 
statute of, 305, 392. 

Laing, Samuel, Nates of a Traveller, 
71 ; Denmark and the Duchies, 309 ; 
Tour in Sweden, olO. 

Lahsez Faire, a practical rule, not a 
principle of universal application, 
162, 168 ; applied to truck, 3o6 ; to 
factory legislation, ooT-9 ; to strikes 
and trades unions, 885, 386. 

Lamport, Charles, effect of unsanitary 
conditions upon life and laboring 
power, 65?i. 

Land, tenure of, in different countries, 
207-13. 

Laveleye, B. de., the orthodox political 
economy, 155. 

Lecky, ITistory of Rationalism in Eu- 
rope, 29n., 405«. 

Legal profession, duration of life in, 
37. 

Legislation in aid of labor, 168-73, 
356-62 ; in restraint of labor, 302-9. 

Leighton, Sir B., concession of Cow- 
land, 24. 

Leslie, T. B. CliflTe, Land Sijstems of 
Ireland and the Continent, 2Vin. 

Levi, Leone, estimated number of 
working days in the year, 31. 

Liquors, consumption of, in Great 
Britain, 349, 350. 

Lock-outs affecting the regularity of 
employment, 30. 

Locock, Mr., food of the laboring pop- 
ulation of the Netherlands, 56?z.; 
strikes, 395. 

Longe, F. D., Refutation of the Wage 
Fund, etc., 132?*. 

Lytton, Mr., cooperation in Austria, 
288 ; the corporation system, 310. 

Macadam, Dr. S., analyses of drink- 
ing water, 65. 

Macaulay, T. B., ITistory of England, 
369, 370. 

Macedonia, its winter population aug- 
mented by immigration, I87?t. 

Mahon, Lord, History of England, 
41. 

Machinery, waste of, with ignorant 
labor, 67 ; disturbances introduced 
by machinery into labor, 178, 189. 

Malet, Mr., factory legislation in 
France, 361. 

Malthusianism, chap. vi. , cf. p. 357. 

Manchester School of Political Econ- 
omy, 16i, 162, 336. 

"Manchester Unity," the, its finant ial 
condition, 400. 

Mansfield, Lord, the incidence of taxa- 
tion, 316«. 

Martineau, H., History of England, 
;j(), 176«., S32, 



Marriage, procrastination of, 3.54, 355 , 
statistics of age at marriage, 356; 
effects of recent social causes in 
diminishing marriage, 381. 

Massachusetts Colony, industrial legis- 
lation of, 305, 306, 337. 

Maurice (and Tallon), Legislation sur 
le Travail des Eivfants, 361. 

McCuUoch, J. R. Political Economy, 
105, 10971. , 120«., 121«.; Commer- 
cAal Dictionary, 350/i. 

McDonnell, Survey of Political 
Economy, 282. 

Medical profession, duration of life in 
the, 37. 

Metayer tenancy, 211, 212. 

MiU, James, Political Economy, IMn. 

Mill, John Stuart, Political Economy 
(Little & Brown, 1848), the allot- 
ment system, 25?i.; influence of the 
imagination in economics, 77m.; the 
degradation of the English laboring 
population, 82«., 83«. ; "diminish- 
ing returns" in agriculture, 96?i.; 
working-classes as consumers of 
manufactured goods, 125)' . the 
wage fund doctrine, 143 i.\ tiie law 
of international values, 196, 197; 
co-operation, 282 ; the office of cus- 
tom, 311, 313, 314 ; small means 
produce no effect in elevating a peo- 
ple, 345?i.; effect on wages of the 
ownership of property by the wages 
class, 348 ; women as artisans, 379 ; 
Some Unsettled Questions of Politi- 
cal Econom.y, the economic man, 
174, 175 ; The Fortnightly Review, 
wage fund doctrine, l;i9, 140. 

Mining, accidents in, to be considered 
in computing the wages paid, 36?*. ; 
sulphur, inltaly, paymentof wages, 2 1 . 

Mobility of labor essential to competi- 
tion, 163 ; actual mobility of labor, 
chap, xi.; interference by law with, 
307-9; (see chaps, xviii., xix. , ^>a,s- 
sim); diminished in the case of wo- 
men by physiological causes, and by 
their failure to receive the support 
of public opinion, 377-8. 

Money, the purchase-power of, affect- 
ing nominal wages, 13. 

Morris, O'Connor, religious differ- 
ences in Ireland, 369w. 

Muggeridge, Mr. , immobility of Eng- 
lish labor, 185 ; testimonjr respect- 
ing frame-rents, 334, 335. 

Mulholland, John, comparative cost 
of clothing from cotton and from 
flax, 122m. 

Mundella, A. J., superior efficiency ol 
North of England laborers, 47. 

Napier and Ettrick, Lord, intellectual 
relations of England and America, 
142«. 



434 



INDEX. 



Nationality, affeci ng the efficiency of 
labor, 43-6. 

"Necessary Wages," the doctrine of, 
chap. vii. 

Neison, Dr. , statistics of mortality in 
various trades, '.M. 

Netherlands, the food of the laboring 
population of, 5(5 ; habits respecting 
dwellings, 118?t. ; proportion of for- 
eigners, 1 84 ; marriage statistics, 
356 ; absence of factory legislation, 
863 ; strikes but little known, 395 ; 
trade clubs, 403. 

New England, food habits of the peo- 
ple, 123, 134. 

Newmarch, Wm., factory legislation, 
359. 

Newman, F. W., Lectures on Political 
Economy^ 158?*.. 

Nicholls, Sir George, History of the 
Englixh Poor Laws, 331. 

Nominal distinguished from real 
wages, 12 ; causes which produce the 
divergence, 13 et seq. 

Nominal distinguished from real cost 
of labor, 40 ; causes which produce 
the divergence, 41 et seq. 

Normandie, M., report on savings 
banks in Europe, 350. 

Northcote, Sir Stafford, real distin- 
guished from nominal wages, 38, 3'.). 

Norway, marriage statistics, 356 ; 
strikes, 396. 

Norwegians in the United States, 183. 

Occupation, change of, frequent ne- 
cessity for, 178 ; Adam Smith's view, 
193, 193 ; Prof. Cairnes' view, 193 ; 
his theory of " Non-Competing 
Groups," 19.5-203 ;change of occupa- 
tion formerly forbidden or restricted 
by law in England, 306, 307 ; women, 
by 37 Edward III., allowed to inter- 
change trades, 379«. ; access to trades 
restricted by " union" regulations, 
403, 404. 

Ollivier, M. , the act (France) of May 
35, 1864, 394. 

Opinion, public, influential in deter- 
mining wages, 362-69 ; in determin- 
ing rents, 369-73. 

Organization of industry conducing 
to efficiency, 67-73. 

Painting, house, irregularity of em- 
ployment in, 38, 33. 

Pakenham, Mr., the food of Belgian 
laborers, 56n. 

Palgrave, Consul, good work not ap- 
preciated in Anatolia, 60w. 

Palmer, CM., the removal of labor- 
ers, 346. 

Paper money, changes in circulation 
affecting nominal wages, 14 ; of the 
American Revolution, 16; fluctua- 



tions in paper money placing th« 
wages class at a disadvantage, 310-3. 

Parsimony of employers opposed to 
true economy, 58, 59, 164. 

Payment of wages, variety in form of, 
19 ; payments in kind, 334-7. 

Paupers in England in 1833 better fed 
than independent laborers, 57; labor- 
ers, once become paupers, seldom 
recover tone, 88 ; English laws of 
pauper settlement, 308, 309. 

Peasant proprietorship of land, 5, 9, 
307-9, 243. 

Pennant, Th., Toitr in Scotland, 324. 

Perry, A. L., Political Economy, 138, 
139, 143 ; The Financier, 81, 83, 353. 

Peto, Sir M., testimony respecting 
truck, 329. 

Petre, Mr., payment of agricultural 
wages in Prussia, 20;i. ; the practice 
of "wandering" in nianual trades in 
Germany, 187/i. 

Phipps, Mr., married women but little 
employed in factories in Wurtem- 
berg, 383w. 

Piece-work, how to compute the wages 
of, 13/i. 

Pig, permission to keep, 23 ; formerly 
paying the rent in Ireland, 24. 

Political Economy, the orthodox, 155 • 
the d 2^riori school, 175. 

Poor Laws, English, 308, 309 ; effect 
on wage labor, 319-33. 

Population, Malthus' law of, chap, vi 

Porter, G. R., The Progress of the 
Nation, 13 ; Statistical Journal, 350. 

Potato, the, its use as the sole article 
of food, 121-4. 

Poverty the curse of the poor, 166. 

Prices and Wages. 13 ; differences in 
local prices introduce great complex- 
ity into computations of wages, 17. 

Production furnishes the measure of 
wages, chap. viii. ; continuity of, 
the employer's interest in, 398, 399. 

Profits, certain classes of laborers paid 
from profits, not from revenue, 9 ; 
profits, the object in giving employ- 
ment, 138-30, 291 ; the expectation 
of profits the test of wage labor, 31 6, 
the term made by some economists 
to include the wages of supervision 
and management, 10 ; in this treatise 
it signifies the gains of the employer, 
aside from the returns of captal, 330; 
are excessive profits restored to 
wages ? 337-9 ; are profits at the 
minimum? 253-61; rates of profit, 
368. 

" Protective " Tariffs supported by ar- 
guments which confound wages 
and the cost of labor, 41. 

Prussia, relative expenditure of differ- 
ent classes for food, clothing, etc., 
117w. ; factory legislation, 360, 361 ; 



INDEX. 



42a 



women, in agriculture, 380»i:.; sirikes, 
395?'..; trades unions and friendly 

societies, 402. 
Purdy, Fred'k, payment of wages in 
Wales, 30yi.; in England, 2lw. ; har- 
vest wages in Ireland, 26//.; irregu- 
larity of agricultural wages, 37w. ; 
substitution of corn-meal for the 
potato in Ireland, 120yi. ; difference 
in local agricultural wages, 186«.; 
division of the annual product of land 
in England, 269rt.; cider and beer 
payments in English agriculture, 
o27 ; women in agriculture, 380;*. 

Quarrying, irregularity of employment 

in, 28. 
Quetelet, A., statistics of height and 

weight, 50, 51. 

Real, distinguished from nominal 
wages, 12. 

Real, distinguished from nominal cost 
of labor, 40. 

Bent, in jiart payment of wages, 21 : 
Ricardo's theory of rent, 224, 225 ; 
the term only used in this treatise 
of sums paid lor land actually leased, 
225, 226 ; rates of rent influenced 
greatly by public opinion, 367-72 ; 
rental of machines, 332-5 

Report (House of Commons), Employ- 
ment of women and children in agri- 
culture, 20/j,, 23, 24, 47, 52, 53, 72, 
176w.; 201, 302, 382/i.; Friendly So- 
cieties (1874), 403; Railway laborers 
(1846), 176, 329 ; Poor Law Com- 
missioners (1831 J, 32271.; (1832), 
322w.; (1S83), 57, 86»i.: (1842 34, 37, 
63, 64, 85 ; stoppage of wages, 1867 ; 
Payment of Wages Bill (1854), 21w.; 
255«., 256?i., 329; to Local Govern- 
ment Board (1873), 52, 69, 378«. 

Respect and sympathy for labor, influ- 
ential in determining wages, 362-72 ; 
wanting in the case of women as la- 
borers, 383, 384. 

Retail trade, failure of competition 
in, 311-5. 

Returns of capital, the term how used 
in this treatise, 225, 231, 232. 

Revenue, certain classes of laborers 
paid from the revenue of their em- 
ployer, and not from profits, 9. 

Ricardo, David, his theory of rent, 
2;24«. ; definition of the banking func- 
tion, 228. 

Richard II. (England), industrial 
legislation of his reign, 305, 307 ; 
insurrection of the serfs 390. 

Rickards, Prof., the doctr ne of Mal- 
thus, 195. 

Riesbach, Baron, habits respecting 
dress of North and South German,'., 
117. 



Rogers, J. E. Thorold, PoHtica. Econ- 
omy, 66; increased productivenesfc 
of English agriculture, 93w. ; cheap 
food undesirable, 121 ; effects ol 
fashion on manufacturing industry, 
179)1. ; popular tenure of the soil, 
211m. ; profits — interest, 231m., 233 ; 
co-operation defined, 2677t. ; the 
English law of pauper settlement, 
308 ; competition in retail trade, 315; 
frugality of Cumberland and West- 
moreland peasantry, 347 ; rents in 
England, 368 ; the condition of the 
Irish peasantry before the famine, 
370m. ; History of Agriculture and 
Prices in England, freedom of labor 
movement, 13th to 15th century, 
187m. ; peasantry divorced from the 
soil, 222, 223 ; industrial legislation 
following the Black Death, 304 ; wo- 
men in trades, 379 ; the servile insur- 
rection, 390 ; Cohden and Political 
Opinion, the incidence of taxation, 
316 ; rents in England influenced by 
public opinion, 367 ; Notes to Adam 
Smith's Wealth of Nations, 317. 

Rose, Edwin, superiority of English 
labor, 43, 68. 

Rumford, Count, Essays, 166m. 

Russia, holidays in, 29 ; inefficiency 
of lalDor, 43 ; irregularity in factory 
attendance, 48m. ; feebleness of the 
industrial desires of the peasantry, 
127m. ; mobility of the laboring 
population, 180 , peasant proprietor- 
ship increasing, 209 ; savings banks 
statistics, 350m. ; absence of factory 
legislation, 362; value of serfs 
before emancipation, 37'3 ; women 
in agriculture, 379m. ; strikes, 396; 
"artels," 403. 

Ryot tenancy, 9, 213. 

Salary or stipend class, not wage- 
laborers, 215, 247, 296m. 

Sanitary Commission of the U. S., 
Statistical Memoirs, 51. 

Savings banks statistics, 347, 349, 
350. 

Say, J. B., 166, 167m. 

Scotland, payment of agricultural 
wages in, 20 ; efficiency of labor, 47 ; 
statistics of height, 50 ;_ former 
indolence of the population, 76 ; 
food habits of the people, 118, 
120m. ; speech differences among the 
population affecting the mobility 
of labor, 175m. ; proportion of bread- 
winners to dependents, 191 ; tenure 
of laud, 208 ; marriage statistics, 356, 
381m. ; women in agriculture, 381m. 

Scott, H. B. M. Consul, expenditures 
of different classes in Wiirtemburg, 
118m.; women in manufacturing 
industry, SS'Sn. 



4.26 



INDEX. 



Bedifwick, T Political Economy, 5. 

Beni i)i , Nassa i W., Political Econony, 
4, 9/1., 42, 97, 104, 124«., 125m., 184, 
185, 2(J8/?.., 2G9«. 356«. ; Lectures on 
Wages. 25, 20 : Foreign Poor Laws, 
323. 

Settlement, English law of pauper, 
308. 

Sexual restraint, influence on wages, 
354-6. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, laborers' cot- 
tages, 23. 

Shares, laborers hired on, not properly 
wage-laborers, 214. 

Sickness, loss of time by, an element 
in determining real wages, 38; 
statistics of, 63 ; friendly societies 
insuring against, 399, 402. 

Simon, Jules, U Oavriire, 3807t. 

Sismondi, land the true savings bank, 
o4S ; public opinion influencing 
rents in Italy, o08. 

Slavery, the master's interest not 
preventing abuse or neglect, 59. 

Slave labor, always inetiective, 73, 74. 

"Sliding Scale," in wages, 270, 
271. 

Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations 
(Rogers' edition), ineffectiveness of 
slave labor, 73; wages the encour- 
agement of industry, 80 ; habits of 
various nations respecting clothing, 
124«. ; proportion of broad-winners 
to dependents, 125?t. ; the immobility 
of labor, 18') ; changes of occupation, 
192 ; the salary or stipend class, 215, 
216; the ordinary rate of profit, 
268«. ; combination of masters to 
lower wages, 393. 

Smith, Angus, carbonic acid gas in 
mines, 37. 

Smith, E. Peshine, Political Economy, 
58, 141. 

Smith, George, excessive labor of 
children in brickyards, 52. 

Social Science Transactions, 1864, 286 ; 
1865, 37, 48; 1806, 23, 61 ; 1867, 55, 
65, 122n. ; 1868, 47 ; 1869, 38, 39 ; 
1870,52,65; 1871, 274, 334; 1872, 
34, 143/1., 285; 1874 202. 

Southern States (U. S.), payment of 
agricultural wages in, 20. 

Spain, higgling in retail trade, 315;i ; 
absence of factory legislation, 
362. 

Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Biol- 
ogy, 259w,. 

Spender, Edward, cider truck in Eng- 
land, 337. 

Spinsters, proportional number in 
England and Scotland, 381«. 

Bpitalfields, the condition of the pop- 
ulation, 85 

Htanhope, Edward, lab )rers' cottages, 
23/i. 



Statiiitical Journal, xii., 350: xx. 
184; xxii., 350; xxiii., 375; xxiv. 
20, 21, 30, 178, 186w, 187", 327, 
359; XXV., 26«., 33/i. ; xxvi. 122n. ; 
xxvii., 33?i., 327; xxviii., 48, 72, 
178, 185, 257, 353 ; xxx., 388. 

" Statute of laborers," 305, 392. 

Strachey, Mr., Germans easily adapting 
themselves to the ways of other 
peoples, 187m. ; cooperation in Den- 
mark, 287, 289 ; restrictions on in- 
dustry removed in Denmark, 309 ; 
strikes, 390 ; trade clubs, 402. 

Strikes, loss of time by, 30 ; dura- 
tion of, 31 ; cooperation would abol- 
ish, 371 ; when strikes may be re- 
garded as unsuccessful, 298«.; strikes 
against the labor of women, 378/t. ; 
the possible utility of strikes often 
decided against, on grounds of the 
wage fund, 385, 38() ; on the 
ground that they always fail, 388, 
is this conclusive V 389 ; strikes are 
the insurrections of labor ; may be 
justified by ultimate results, 390.^93 ; 
legislation against strikes in Eng- 
land, 392 ; in Europe, 395, 396. 

Stuart, Consul, holidays in the Eastern 
church, 29w. ; lack of machinery 
in Epirus, 67. 

Subsistence, tends to increase more 
slowly than population, 102-5; the 
condition precedent of production, 
133, 133. 

Sweden, duration of the labormg 
power in, 34, 35 ; marriage statistics 
356, factory legislation, 362. 

Swedes in the United States, 

Switzerland, eflSciency of labor in, 
457i, ; industrial desires of the peas- 
antry, 127m. ; character of the em- 
ploying class 259, 260 ; cooperation, 
274, 282 ; savings banks statistics, 
350 ; division of landed property 
351, factory legislation, 361. 

Sykes, Col., the dwellings of Lanca- 
shire, 61. 

Sympathy, public, influential in de- 
termining wages, 36'3-9 ; in deter- 
mining rents, 369-72 ; wanting in 
the case of women as laborers, 383, 
384. 

Tallon and Maurice, Legislatioji sur le 
Travail des Enfants, 361. 

Taylor, H. B. M. Consul, Eastern mar- 
riage customs, 116. 

Taylor, W. C, married women in 
factories in England, 383;t. 

Taxation, under perfect competition, 
is diffused equitably, 160 ; under im- 
perfect competition the wages clasg 
may be put at disadvantage by its 
incidence, 315-18. 



INDEX. 



42^ 



rhompson, Mr., superiority of English 
labor, (it). 

Thompson, J., Perronet, food habits 
of the Irish and the English, llS?i. 

Thornton, Over-Population^ 25?j. ; 
Oh Labor, 50/*, 2797*, 293-5. 

Tory Party, of England, influence in 
favor of early marriages, 356h,. 

T'-ades Unions, not to be condemned 
simply because they are restrictive, 
172; their economical nature, o96 ; 
as friendly societies, 399. 

Cruck-payments make it difficult to 
compute real wages, 20 ; truck de- 
fined and described, 324-7 ; English 
legislation respecting, 327 ; reasons 
for truck, 328, 329 ; profits of, 330, 
Sol ; abuses of, 331, 332 ; economical 
nature of, 835-344; controlled by 
public opinion, 367>j. 

TufFnell, Carleton, inefficient labor not 
wanted at any price, 49>i. 

Turkey, holidays in, 29; good work 
not appreciated, 60«.. ; marriage 
customs, 116. 

CTnited States, difficulty of computing 
real wages, 19 ; payment of agricul- 
tural wages, 20 ; agricultural wages 
prior to 1850, paid largely in kind, 
21 ; duration of the laboring power, 
34, 35; statistics of height and 
weight, 51 ; food habits of the peo- 
ple, 123, 124 ; ratio of breadwinners 
to dependents, 126m. ; wages paid 
directly out of the product of labor, 
135, 136 ; prevalence of the wage 
fund doctrine explained, 140-43 ; in- 
crease in the number of laborers 
bringing increase of wages, 149 ; 
Chinese in the United States, 176 ; 
mobility of the laboring population, 
180, 181 ; foreigners in the United 
States, 181, 182 ; tenure of the land, 
227 ; cooperation, 228 ; great ex- 
tension of retail trading 1860-70, 
313; savings banks statistics, 351, 
352 ; early marriages, 355 ; great 
irregularity in the distribution of 
female industries, 375 ; women in 
agriculture, 380w. ; women in manu- 
factures, 382, 3S3. 

Vauban, Marshal, loss of time by holi- 
days, 29. 

Vethake, H. , Political Economy, 141. 

Victoria, industrial legislation of her 
reign, 560. 

Villerm^, M. , statistics of height and 
weight, 50, 51 ; excessive labor of 
chndren, 167, 168. 

Wages affected by the «xchange of 
distributed for undistributed wealth, 
6, 266 ; made by some economists to 



include the remunt ration of five 
classes of laborers, 10; nomi- 
nal distinguished from real wages, 

12 (chap, ii.); distinguished froni 
cost of la^-T 40; measured by the 
product of industry, chap. viii. ; 
affected by causes which influence 
the efficiency of labor, 145 ; by in- 
ventions and improvements, i46, 
147 ; large and sudden rise of, not 
promotive of frugality, 235 ; laws? 
fixing wages, 304-6; wages of wo- 
men, 372-384. 

Wages-class, chap. xii. ; has either 
the wages or the employing class an 
advantage over the other ? chap. 
xvi. ; how the wages class may be 
put at disadvantage in competition 
with employers, chap. xvii. ; what 
may help them in competition, chap, 
xviii. ; may any advantage be 
given them tlirough strikes or tradea 
unions ? chap. xix. 

Wage-laborers less industrious than 
those working on their own account, 
75-7 ; less fi-ugal, 271, 272. 

Wage-fund, the doctrine of, chap, 
ix. ; stated, 138-40 ; its prevalence 
accounted for, 143 ; refuted, 144-50; 
made use of by some economists to 
settle the question of strikes, 385, 
386. 

Wales, payment of agricultural wages, 
20«. 

Welsh in the United States, 182. 

Walker Amasa Science of Wealthy 
141n., 231w. 

Walsham, Mr., employment of chil- 
dren in factories in the Nether- 
lands, 362. 

Ward, J., Workmeii and Wages. 

13 n., 389m., 395,396, 402. 

Waste, an element in all work, 48, 66 ; 

encouraged by excessive profits, 257, 

258. 
Watts, John, loss of time by strikes, 

30. •)' ' 

Water, impurity of, affecting the 
efficiency of labor, 60, 65. 

Wayland Francis, Political Economy. 
141«. 

Wells, David A., Reports on U. Sc 
Hevenue, 44w., 45m. 

Wheeler, Mr., Cotton Cultivation. 
42m., 67. 

Whewell, Dr., the economic man, 175, 

White, J. E. , steel dust in needle fac- 
tories, 32 ; excessive labor of cliil- 
dren in factories, 52, 53, 301, 202. 

Whitworth, Sir Jos., false economy oi 
employing cheap labor, 41m.. ; ol 
underfeeding, 58m. ; discipline an 
element of efficiency, 98m. 

WiUiam IV., industrial legislation of 
his reign, 322, 337, 328, 360. 



INDEX. 



Winthrop, Governor, History of New 
Erigland, 240, ^1, 342. 

Wolowski, M., restrictions on the 
labor of children, o5S/i. 

Women, irregularity in the employ- 
ment of, in agriculture, 33 ; work 
unsuited to their sex, 52 ; their 
wages inadequate to their service, 
372, 373 ; have especial need to 
move to the labor market, 375, 376 ; 
but are peculiarly disabled therein, 
376-8 ; by actual obstruction on the 
part of men, 377, 378 ; by lack of 
public sympathy and support, 379 ; 
iheii need to enter the labor market 



comparatively modem, 379-81 ; iht 
supposed necessity often not a real 
one, 381 ; loss and waste in the 
family by reason of the absence of 
the wife and daughter, 382, 
383. 

Workhouse test for able-bodied pau- 
pers, 370-4 

Wiirtemburg, expenditures of differint 
classes, llSyi. ; married women in 
factories, 383/t. 

Young, Arthur, Travels in Ire'and^ 4S, 
76, 183, 339, 368, 369, dSOn. t 7Vc»ei 
in Fratice^ 75, 227. 



